FEM Applications of Catenary Type Structures

The paper deals with Finite Element Modeling of catenary type structures starting from practical problems related to a single cable segment in the case of an electric transmission line. Finite element models allow the analysis of the resulting deformed position and stress state for a given configuration obtained by using the geometric and physical data of a cable. Beam type linear/nonlinear finite element models which can take into account also the temperature variation and extra loading on the cable were developed. Another application of this type of models is for the case of form finding of aerial refueling cable subjected to dynamic pressure. The results were obtained by the commercial finite element software ANSYS.