Comparison of viscous and kinetic dynamic relaxation methods in form-finding of membrane structures

This study focuses on the efficiency and applicability of dynamic relaxation methods in formfinding of membrane structures. Membrane structures have large deformations that require complex nonlinear analysis. The first step of analysis of these structures is the form-finding process including a geometrically nonlinear analysis. Several numerical methods for form-finding have been introduced such as the dynamic relaxation, force density method, particle spring systems and the updated reference strategy. In the present study, dynamic relaxation method (DRM) is investigated. The dynamic relaxation method is an iterative process that is used for the static equilibrium analysis of geometrically nonlinear problems. Five different examples are used in this paper. To achieve the grading of the different dynamic relaxation methods in form-finding of membrane structures, a performance index is introduced. The results indicate that viscous damping methods show better performance than kinetic damping in finding the shapes of membrane structures.