Keywords: suspension roofs, biconcave cable trusses, nonlinear finite element analysis, geometric nonlinearity, fibre reinforced polymer cables, hybrid composites, hybrid FRP cables, SAP2000..

A suspension roof composed of biconcave cable trusses was studied using nonlinear static finite element modelling with the SAP2000 v14 finite element software. Only the geometric nonlinearities of the material are taken into consideration. The results obtained from SAP2000 were verified against a previously published paper. In this paper, the parameters studied are: the effect of pretension, sag to span ratio, distributed loads, various span lengths and cable materials. Apart from the conventional high tensile steel cable fibre reinforced polymer cables were considered; carbon fibre reinforced polymer, basalt fibre reinforced polymer and hybrid fibre reinforced polymer materials. A visual basic for application macro developed by the authors was used to link the Excel with SAP2000 to build geometry, perform analysis and extract the output. Some major results are as follows: (1) cable truss stiffness is enhanced by increasing the pretension, cable stiffness and decreases with increasing span to sag ratio; (2) fibre reinforced polymer and hybrid fibre reinforced polymer cables experience an enhanced behaviour for large spans unlike HS steel cables which become inadequate as spans increase.

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