Deflections of highly inflated fabric tubes

Inflatable beams made of modern textile materials with important mechanical characteristics can be inflated at high pressure. The aim of the paper is to present experimental, analytical and numerical results on the deflections of highly inflated fabric tubes submitted to bending loads. Experiments are displayed and we show that tube behaviour looks like that of inflatable panels (Thin-Walled Struct. 40 (2002) 523-536). Equilibrium equations are once again written in the deformed state to take into account the geometrical stiffness and the following forces. The influence of the shear stress cannot be neglected and Timoshenko's beam theory is used. A new inflatable tube theory is established and simple analytical formulas are given for a cantilever-inflated tube. Comparisons between analytical and experimental results are shown. A new inflatable finite tube element is constructed by use of algebraic operations, because the compliance matrix of the cantilever beam is not symmetric. Comparisons between experimental, analytical and numerical results prove the accuracy of this beam theory and on this new finite element for solving problems on the deflections of highly inflated tubes. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.