Structures Formed by Low Pressure Inflatable Tubes. New Analysis Methods and Recent Constructions

OÑATE EUGENIO; FLORES FERNANDO G.; MARCIPAR JAVIER

Textile Composites and Inflatable Structures II

springer

Lugar: Dordretcht; Año: 2008; p. 163 - 196

This paper shows applications of recently developed thin shell element adequate for the analysis of membranes and inflatable structures. The element is a three node triangle with only translational degrees of freedom that uses the configuration of the three adjacent elements to evaluate the strains in terms of the nodal displacements only.  This allows us to compute (constant) bending strains and (linear) membrane strains using a total Lagrangian formulation. Several examples, including inflation and deflation of membranes and some practical applications to the analysis, design and construction of membranes structures formed by low pressure inflatable tubes are presented.