Computer implementation of piecewise cable element based on the absolute nodal coordinate formulation and its application in wire modeling

A new high-voltage electricity wire model is proposed to simulate the dynamic behavior of the wire after tension failure and the nonlinear sliding joints between the wire and the iron tower. A previously developed piecewise cable element based on the absolute nodal coordinate formulation is used with its computer implementation given in this paper. In order to describe the initial tension in the wire, a static solving approach is used to achieve equilibrium between the element elastic force and the external force including the tension. The obtained configuration of the wire is then used as the initial configuration of analysis in case of unloaded external tension force. Thereby, the dynamic behavior of the wire can be modeled. The sliding joint constraint is used to describe the motion of the wire going through the iron tower after tension failure. A new static solution approach is developed to avoid the sliding joint constraint violation in the resulting equilibrium configuration. The convergence of the piecewise cable element based on the absolute nodal coordinate formulation is tested. A set of comparative results is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the method proposed in this investigation.