Finite element analysis on multi-chamber tensairity-like structures filled with fluid and/or gas

The concept of Tensairity-structures [6] developed by the company Airlight in Biasca, Switzerland, has been known since 2004. The advantages of the airbeams with a compression element and a spiraled cable are essentially their light weight and that such beams can be used for wide span structures. To achieve a further weight reduction Pronk et al [8] proposed to replace the compression element by an additional slim chamber filled with water. Experiments with these multi-chamber beams with and without cables showed a stiffer behavior in bending tests compared to only air filled beams. In the current contribution different tests like - primarily - the bending of multi-chamber beams will be simulated with finite elements. Explicit and implicit finite element simulations with LS-DYNA [7] and FEAP-MeKa [11] respectively will be performed with a special focus on the interaction of structural deformations and the gas/fluid filling in combination with the cables contacting the membranes. The specific features have been implemented in the above codes. The fluid and/or gas filling is replaced by an energetically equivalent load and corresponding stiffness matrix contributions to simulate quasi-static fluid-structure interaction taking the effect of the deformations of the chambers on the fluid/gas filling into account. This approach has already been introduced for fluid-structure interaction problems with large deformations and stability analysis in [1], [2]. For the implicit simulation the cables will be added using special solid-beam finite elements [5]. A new curve-to-surface contact algorithm is developed to model the contact interaction between cables and the deformable shell structure