**2. Project Overview**

The Fuzhou Strait Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium covers about 42,000 m2. The roof has an elliptical MSL-S structure with a span of 116 m × 97 m and the roof structure is mainly composed of grid frame beams, triple square loops and the surrounding concrete columns, in which the frame beams include outer steel concrete ring beams, grid steel beams and the roof support, while the string structure consists of struts, stay cables, square ring cables and string beams. The dome is symmetrical in the east-west direction but asymmetrical in the north-south direction, with the north top higher than the south. The model structure is shown in Figure 1a. The grid beams are made from rectangular steel and the struts have circular steel pipes. The grid beams are rigidly connected with reinforced bases and the struts are articulated with cables and roof grid beams, the nodes of which are shown in Figure 1b,c.

**Figure 1.** String dome structure of the Fuzhou Strait Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium. (**a**) Finite element model; (**b**) Cable connection of each ring; (**c**) Articulation node.

### **3. Numerical Simulation and Model Validation**
