Application of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics to Structural Cable Analysis

Abstract

In this study, a numerical model is proposed for the analysis of a simply supported structural cable. Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH)-a mesh-free, Lagrangian method with advantages for analysis of highly deformable bodies-is utilized to model a cable. In the proposed numerical model, it is assumed that a cable has only longitudinal stiffness in tension. Accordingly, SPH equations derived for solid mechanics are adapted for a structural cable, for the first time. Besides, a proper damping parameter is introduced to capture the behavior of the cable more realistically. In order to validate the proposed numerical model, different experimental and numerical studies available in the literature are used. In addition, novel experiments are carried out. In the experiments, different harmonic motions are applied to a uniformly loaded cable. Results show that the SPH method is an appropriate method to simulate the structural cable.