Nonlinear quasi-static modelling of cable structures including geometric constraints

The purpose of this paper is the modelling in large displacement of systems composed of a rigid platform suspended by flexible cables, as can be observed in lifting systems of a construction crane or in cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs). A recent approach has been proposed in the literature to model the nonlinear behavior of a cable element based on a three dimensional catenary elastic modelling and the general displacement control method (GDCM) as solver. In this paper, two options of this method are proposed to take into account the geometric constraints coupling the large displacements of the cable extremities. These two methods are tested and compared by numerical examples.