R&D projects

Most important R&D projects from recent years which combine academic excellence and software development to deliver innovative tools for structural engineers

Research, development, coding, testing

Creating software for structural engineering is a complex process. The final user (engineer) sees the GUI, the report, etc. But the story of every IDEA StatiCa application starts years before any GUI is available – with research and development which combines physics, mechanics, and deep understanding of codes of practice. And, IDEA StatiCa cannot do this alone so we cooperate with technical universities, especially with engineering faculties at ETH Zurich, CVUT Praha and VUT Brno.

IDEA StatiCa and Hilti

Hilti Group and IDEA StatiCa s.r.o. have entered into a software development agreement focusing on a component-based, finite element method (CBFEM) for anchoring/footing topologies to help improve workflow efficiency. Together we have developed a new version of the PROFIS Engineering baseplate functionality to strengthen seamless workflows and increase productivity and safety in construction projects.

Project DR-Design (IDEA StatiCa Detail)

Every concrete structure has several parts with some form of discontinuity – bracket, opening, anchorage, etc. The objective of DR-Design is to create a new innovative software tool for the automated and optimized design and assessment of discontinuity concrete regions. DR-Design will allow engineers to propose appropriate concrete dimensions as well as location and amount of reinforcement in an efficient way, providing safe and economical designs of discontinuity regions.

The project team is composed of experts from ETH Zurich and software engineers from IDEA StatiCa. The first version of commercial software resulting from this software (IDEA StatiCa Detail) was released in October 2017.

Project Merlion 2 (IDEA StatiCa Member)

The project solves the requirements of construction engineers and designers of steel building structures, lacking a general tool for design of complicated members of steel structures, e.g., complex loading, lateral-torsional buckling of members with semirigid joints.

This application allows strength and stability calculation and fully supports all calculations and analyzes for static loading including geometrically and materially nonlinear analysis with imperfection, which is now state-of-the-art.

The first version of IDEA StatiCa Member came out in 4Q of 2018 and is at the moment in Beta version.

Project Merlion 1 (IDEA StatiCa Connection)

After years of preparation, the research team was put together from IDEA StatiCa developers and academic staff from two technical universities in the Czech Republic – Czech Technical University in Prague (Prof. František Wald & team) and Brno Technical University (Prof. Miroslav Bajer & team). We put together long-term experience with the development of component method (CM), practical experience with the design of steel structures, and proven professional experience with finite-element and software development. Over 30 people took part in this project with over 1,5 mil. EUR of costs incurred in research, development, validation, and verification of this new approach.

Resul of this project, application IDEA StatiCa Connection is quickly becoming the new standard in steel connection design worldwide.