Why is AFRY able to design structures others can’t?

AFRY, an international engineering, design, and advisory company, states in their motto that they are "making future". But what does that mean, and how does it affect the way they work? To find answers, I had a talk with Structural Engineers Jacob Andersen and Niels Peter Aaby, who works in Aarhus' AFRY office.

The structural team is currently working on “Project South at Byporten in Aarhus”, which consists of 3 challenging 12 story buildings with small elevator shafts placed in the corner and a center column. The facades are covered with glass, where the load-carrying structures are concrete frames.

- To make this structure cost-efficient, we had to find a way to avoid anchors and post-tensioning, which would be the normal conservative approach. To avoid this, we needed a more sophisticated approach where we included the effect from the entire structure. We needed to use the right software to stay competitive, Said Jacob Andersen and Niels Peter Aaby.

FEM-Design proved to be a perfect tool for this project. During the last 6 years, AFRY has participated in the FEM-Design workgroup, where many of their ideas has turned into actual development.

One of the features was the concealed bar function, where a part of the wall area is designed as a bar structure. This idea was developed by AFRY and StruSoft together, and in “Project South”, this is a crucial feature. AFRY does not stop with the stability and the load takedown analysis, they also design the final reinforcement in a 3D model in FEM-Design.

- Before the concealed bar feature, we were not able to apply bar reinforcement into the walls. That made us make conservative designs. With this feature, we are able to design the column legs and beams with bi-axial bending and second-order analysis. We group these designs in the model and transfer these to reinforcement sketches, said Jacob Andersen and Niels Peter Aaby.

At StruSoft we are very privileged to be able to work so closely with AFRY. The direct customer influence on our development keeps us on the right track, making us able to stay sharp and to develop the solutions for today and for the future.