Questions and discussion for this lecture live here. Fire away by hitting Reply below 
Hi Dr. Sean
- Catenary shape and fanicular form are the same?
- Does the analytical solution nearly represent the shape of real catenary form finding (I mean from experiment)?
Hi,
Yes - since our analysis progressively eliminates the contribution from any members in compression - the resulting structure will be tension-only.
The analytical solution should approximate an experimental solution, although one must allow for all of the usual discrepancies between analytical and experimental solutions - one that comes to mind will be the assumption of completely frictionless joints - this is difficult to represent in practice. But, generally speaking, the our analytical solution should be a good approximation.
Seán