Method to analyze wrinkled membranes with zero shear modulus and equivalent stiffness

Abstract

To solve the problems of divergence, low accuracy and project application of membrane wrinkling analysis, an analysis method of zero shear modulus and equivalent stiffness was proposed. This method is an improvement to the previous method (Method I) of local coordinate transposition and stiffness equivalence. The new method is derived and the feasibility is theoretically proved. A small-scale membrane structure is analyzed by the two methods, and the results show that the computational efficiency of the new method (Method II) is approximately 23 times that of Method I. When Method II is applied to a large-scale membrane stadium structure, it is found that this new method can quickly make the second principal stress of one way wrinkled elements zero, and make the two principal stresses of two-way wrinkled elements zero as well. It could attain the correct load responses right after the appearance of wrinkled elements, which indicates that Method II can be applied to wrinkling analysis of large-scale membrane structures.

Keywords

membrane structures / finite element method / wrinkling analysis / shear modulus / zero-setting / equivalent stiffness

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