Frame-grid mechanical design

The paper presents an analysis of the frame-grid tension-distribution problem, in which the frame loading is treated as continuously distributed; use is made of the similarity between wire-tension loss due to support-rod deflection and the well known structural behaviour of the elastically supported beam. This yields solutions which, though involving numerical or graphical integration, are by no means impracticably lengthy for hand computation as compared with a recent discrete-loading treatment of the problem, which leads to results requiring digital-computing facilities for evaluation. The wire-tension distribution for a practical grid design has been calculated by this method and shown to be in good agreement with the observed distribution.