Formfinding - Initial state for a cable-stayed bridge

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1

I have a question regarding the input for form-finding in RFEM 6.

As part of my master's thesis, I am designing a pedestrian cable-stayed bridge using solid construction. To determine the prestressing forces of the inclined cables, I am using the "Form-finding" add-on in RFEM 6.

I followed a webinar and created the following load cases:

-LC1: permanent loads (self-weight and other permanent actions)
-LC2: form-finding
-LC3: LC1 + LC2

For the subsequent load combinations, I used LC3 as the initial state.

However, I am unsure which option under "Initial State" should be selected correctly to ensure that the loads from LC1 are not considered twice. By default, the option "Final State" is set. Alternatively, there is the option "Distortion."

Could someone please tell me which setting is correct in this case and whether, when using the final state, the permanent loads from LC1 are applied again in the load combinations or not?

Thank you very much for your support.

3

Hello,
unfortunately, I do not know which webinar you watched, but the whole thing is actually explained in detail here in the first example:

The correct setting is "final state," since you want to consider the final state from load case 3 (LF3) as the initial state for your load combination (LK). LF3 is only used for form finding.