Form-finding software and minimal surface equation: a comparative approach

Abstract

The shape of membrane and cable-net structures is usually modeled by geometry of
minimal surfaces. Using central finite differences method, a nonlinear iterative process for
finding the minimal surface with given fixed boundary conditions is developed and
implemented in Mathematica®. Having in mind form-finding of membrane structures, the
results are compared with the results obtained by commercial package EASY®, made by
Technet GmbH, Germany.