History of the Analysis of Cable Net Structures

The history of the analysis of cable net structures is quite brief. The first prestressed cable net structures were built about fifty years ago. Cable nets are nonlinear structures although most of their nonlinearity is eliminated with prestressing. Several different methods of coping with the nonlinearity have been developed. As fabrics were improved, tensioned fabric structures (TFS) replaced cable nets. The methods of analysis developed for cable nets were modified and used for analysis of TFS. Most current available programs for cable nets and TFS are proprietary “black boxes” and hence do not give the user an understanding of their methods of analysis.