A new deformable catenary element for the analysis of cable net structures

The formulation of a deformable catenary element permitting the simulation of nets systems composed of multiple cables is presented. The formulation proposed, stemming as a modification of the conventional equations for inextensible cables, ensures exact equilibrium after the deformation of the cable. The use of analytical expressions for both the geometrical description of the element and the corresponding tangent stiffness provides high numerical stability to the calculation procedures. The accuracy and efficiency of the formulation are assessed by comparison with available results obtained by other authors using different analytical or numerical approaches.