The exceptional performance of spider webs stems from their optimized geometric design and the excellent mechanical properties of spider silk. A predictive model was developed for analyzing tensile forces and structurally optimizing the web, based on the analytical equations of an elastic catenary; the entire problem is addressed numerically using the Newton-Raphson method. An experiment was also set up to analyze the deformed shape of loaded webs with various geometries. A good agreement was found between the numerical and experimental results, indicating the suitability of the predictive model for simulating the behavior of spider web structures under the assumptions that the threads carry only axial tensile stresses and that there is no rotation either within or outside their local plane under loading.
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