Study on large displacement responses of membrane structures replaced with line members in tensile field

The design of membrane structures needs to analyze the behavior of finite displacement after the completing as well as during the construction. The paper proposes the computational method that uses a structural model replaced with line-member units without restricting the shapes of triangular elements and the Poisson's ratio. The model composed by the units keeps compression-free, so that the proposed method can more easily get equilibrium solutions than using the element with a bilinear stress-strain relation. If the analysis may neglect the bending stiffness in membrane structures, the method gives more exact solutions than the bilinear model that assumes the element to be plane and that uses expedient compressive stiffness.