Reference Type: Journal Article Record Number: 1 Author: H. B. Liu and Chen, Z. H. Year: 2011 Title: Influence of cable sliding on the stability of suspen-dome with stacked arches structures Journal: Advanced Steel Construction Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Pages: 17 Start Page: 54 Short Title: Influence of cable sliding on the stability of suspen-dome with stacked arches structures DOI: 10.18057/IJASC.2012.8.1.4 Keywords: Suspen-dome with stacked arch structures, Continuous cable joint, Sliding cable element, Stability Abstract: A new type of continuous cable joint is presented in this paper for the suspen-dome with stacked arch. For this new cable joint, there are two state: locked state and unlocked state. In the locked state, the hoop cable cannot slide around cable joint. In the unlocked state, the hoop cable can slide around cable joint. In order to analyze the stability of suspen-dome with stacked arches structures under condition that the continuous cable joint is unlocked state, A three-node sliding cable element was used and its tangent stiffness matrix was determined based on the principal of virtual work and uniform strain assumption. The element was then implemented in commercial finite element software ABAQUS as a user defined element and applied in the stability analysis of a suspen-dome with stacked arches structure. Both symmetric and asymmetric load were considered for the suspen-dome with stacked arches structure to investigate the influence of cable joint state on its stability behavior. It was concluded that the stability behavior when the continuous cable joint is locked is better than that of when the continuous cable joint is unlocked. Author Address: Department of Civil Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China