Initial form analysis of ETFE cushions

The ETFE cushions will be used in the building of national swimming centre for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.Therefore this style of structure is coming to be paid more and more attentions.This paper is about the initial form analysis of ETFE cushions.ANSYS and APDL are first used to develop the program of form-finding.And the program is verified correct in this paper.Then some discussions about the form-finding results of the ETFE cushions are carried out and some advice for design is proposed in this paper.