At the University of Kassel minister Boris Rhein and Vice-president professor Martin Lawerenz handed ceremonially over the funding agreement for the LOEWE-projects. One of the projects was the F+E project FALTREM which develops a new analysis software for building structures. The project is edited in collaboration with the University of Kassel, department of software engineering, and the firm BE-Statik and runs until end of 2014. The result will be a highly integrated analysis-kernel that allows the easy and fast computation of complete building structures in an  engineering manner. 

Engineers today are working under increasing time and budget stress, which is pushing them to their limits of productivity. The traditional way of structural engineers consists of partitioning the load-bearing structure into subsystems, calculating these separately using specialized programs, and finally assembling the results manually.  This can not only be quite time consuming, but also be a lot of menial work.  Another challenge for engineers is the new generation of norms and regulations of the Eurocodes that mostly disallow rough calculation.  This introduces an additional element of stress to the economical situation of more than ten thousand engineering offices in this sector.

Goal of this R&D project is the software FALTREM which offers a chance of regaining productivity to a broad group of engineering firms.  The project's milestones are 1. implementing a database for the computational model, 2. developing the module FALTREM for calculating 3D load-bearing structures, and 3. linking the module to the editor ConED and validationg the calculation core.

The project is an interdisciplinary effort of Eisfeld Engineering acting as user and developer, BE-STATIK as producer of the calculation core, and the research group Software Engineering of the University of Kassel.

Heavy transport traffic has increased strain on bridges, changing their usage patterns. To realisticly assess their fitness for use as well as their structural soundness, high-precision strain and temperature sensors, as used in monitoring systems using fiber optics, can be employed.

This knowledge then helps boosting the efficiency as well as the economy of refurbishing efforts. Also, bridges that cannot be proven statically sound may instead be measured.

This talk introduces the engineering concept as well as the monitoring system, and gives examples for their use in context of old pressed concrete bridges. 

"This is our race tactics worked out perfectly," beamed the Eisfeld Ingenieure supported trio after winning the overall medal for the ninth DM-LAG Wesertal.

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ConED, the Conceptual Engineering Editor, is the tool to assist you during conceptual design and preliminary analysis of load-bearing structures. It was created to suit the needs of structural engineers, and was refined and adapted while used in their day-to-day projects. With its well thought-out function set, ConED helps reach your goal where other software packages still waste time and effort.

Risc Analysis and Quality Assurance is becoming increasingly important, especially due to the hightened complexity of planning and construction processes that are accomplished in shorter time frames. This is why Eisfeld Engineers AG is now certified to ISO 9001. Additionally, Eisfeld Engineers are applying Failure Mode and Effects Analysis to load-bearing structures, because of the explicit risc- and subsequent robustness analysis for exceptional actions on high-risc-structures that has been imposed by Eurocode 2012. You can find more information (in german language) on www.tragwerk-fmea.de.

Serious collapses of civil structure due to terror attacks, natural disasters or mistakes in planning and construction initiated among general public and specialists a discussion about the robustness of structures. Consequently robustness evaluation and quality assurance have gained increasing significance as a complementary element; with the building inspectorate introduction of the DIN EN 1990 and DIN EN 1992-1-7 proof of sufficient robustness of buildings for accidental design situations will be made mandatory as of 1.7.2012. This is where the research proposal comes in which develops practical tools for robustness proof.

The research project structure-FMEA has developed a methodology, with which structural designers are able to control risks much better. With this methodology you are able to analyse and communicate the effects of errors and adjustments optimally. The priority is in this case given to fast and component-related identification of critical parts of the structure with the help of the sensitivity analysis, which has been developed by us and the clear definition of priorities in quality assurance of static analysis. Please do not hesitate to contact us, if you would like to learn more about it.

The first Women's Team of the CVJM Kassel has started with four wins and one defeat in the new season. Overall I am very happy with our performance, said CVJM trainer Felix George after the first five matches. „We look at every game and of course want to win every game". The team impresses again this year with a great team spirit which is even stronger with the new matchtrainer Andrea Harder

»Team picture [jpg]

The Eisfeld-Team wins triathlon

» Team picture [PDF]