`Nonlinear analysis of green house systems

Abstract

A numerical procedure based on energy minimization has been extended herein to analyze a system of two dimensional cable trusses called green houses. The joint displacements and member forces results are obtained and compared with a finite element computer program and previously published thesis. This study was done on three cases of span lengths. It was found that the effect of increasing the pylon height (H) on the displacements and member forces is less than the case when reducing the value of (H). It was found also that the choice of the span length L = 16 m is more preferable than the others, because the rate of change of displacements and end forces was minimal compared with the others. It was also observed that when the number of spans is increased, the effect of the variation of the pylon height on the cable truss total weight will be vanished. (C) 2012 Ain Shams University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.