In Situ Determination of Stress Distribution of Inflatable Membrane Structure Using Force Finding Method
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 143, Issue 8
Abstract
Stress distribution on a membrane surface plays a key role in the structural safety and bearing capacity of an inflatable membrane structure, especially for the state under service condition. This paper presents an in situ method to determine the stress distribution of an inflatable membrane structure by using a force-finding method based on measured configuration. On the basis of the previous in situ measurement of geometrical shape and internal pressure, the target inflatable membrane structure is simplified to a membrane link structure with external forces on connection nodes. As a result, the stress distribution of the target structure can be determined based on the optimal solution of force equilibrium between the membrane internal force and internal pressure, as well as the thickness of the constructive membrane material. In order to validate the proposed method, the stress distribution of an experimental model of ETFE (ethylene–tetrafluoroethylene) cushion structure is evaluated following the suggested determining procedure. By carefully comparing the determining results with the numerical results for the forming process of the ETFE cushion model, acceptable agreement is obtained in terms of the stress distributions in the -direction and maximum principle stress. Furthermore, the influence of mesh size on the stress distribution is also investigated by using four mesh sizes during the determining process. It is thus demonstrated that the proposed method is suitable for determining the stress distribution of an inflatable membrane under service conditions, which only requires the geometrical shape and inflated internal pressure of the final state, as well as the thickness of constructive material.
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Acknowledgments
The National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 51478264 and 51278299) and the National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents of China (Grant BX201600104) supported this work. Peixue Lin gave some considerable help during the structural design and experiments. Bin Du gave some help during the determining process of stress distribution of ETFE cushion model. The authors acknowledge with thanks all this help and other unmentioned ones.
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Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 143 • Issue 8 • August 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 25, 2016
Accepted: Dec 16, 2016
Published online: Mar 6, 2017
Published in print: Aug 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Aug 6, 2017
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