Importing CAD models and generating results five times faster than traditional FEA methods

About the customer

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is a renowned architectural and design firm known for its iconic and innovative buildings around the globe. Its reputation as a global leader in sustainable architecture and design, as shown by its many projects, leads the company to design and consult on some of the world’s most challenging structural design projects.

Their challenge

Tall building design in Mexico City requires architects and structural engineers to take a multi-hazard resilience approach to address problems that can result from earthquakes, winds and floods. Innovative, unique buildings that go beyond standard practices require additional external peer reviews to evaluate and ensure designs meet strength and serviceability. These extra peer reviews can significantly lengthen a building project.

The Antara Fase II building in Mexico City is an innovative high-rise tower designed by Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos with architecturally exposed brace-frames that contribute to the lateral load bearing structural system. As the structural engineer for the project, SOM developed the seismic resisting system, including detailed evaluation of the steel braced frame connections, which underwent several design changes during the preconstruction phase. SOM engineers were experienced with traditional finite element method (FEM) analysis for nonstandard connection design.

Their challenge arose from the time constraints placed on the project required to satisfy their client’s deadlines.

Braced frame node schematic.

Our solution

Engineers at SOM opted to use Simcenter™ Simsolid™ software, a mesh-free analysis solver that acts directly on imported computer-aided design (CAD) 3D models without needing to simplify the geometry. By eliminating both the time-consuming task of CAD geometry simplification and complex mesh creation, the engineers could readily import their CAD models into Simcenter Simsolid and generate analysis results five times faster than traditional FEA methods. What would typically take two weeks was completed in two days.

“Although speed is important, validation is critical,” said Abel Diaz, PE SE associate principal, SOM. It was essential for the SOM engineers to verify that the Simcenter Simsolid results were accurate and reliable. With extensive validation examples, SOM was confident that using it would allow engineers to meet analysis requirements and project deadlines.

Simcenter Simsolid enabled SOM to generate analysis results five times faster than traditional FEA methods.

Results

Being able to quickly and reliably generate analysis results and visualize stress, strain and deformation with detailed contours accelerated SOM’s workflow. Leveraging Simcenter Simsolid for the steel brace-framed connection analysis allowed SOM to complete a job that typically took weeks in just a few days – generating a fivefold time savings increase.

“In our process, validation is an essential step in adopting a solution” says Diaz. “There is always a balance between ease of use, time savings and ensuring results make physical sense. In addition to producing results five times faster, what was powerful was the correlation between Simcenter Simsolid results and traditional analysis methods, which supported our decision to use Simcenter Simsolid.”