Are engineers turning away from structural software as it becomes more sophisticated?

The Buildup Report: April 2021

The software revolution has vastly changed all industries, and structural engineering is no exception. As computational power has grown, techniques that were once reserved for research laboratories have become commonplace in design offices.

Figure 1. Comprehension Complexity Relationship

Finite element analysis software, developed for high precision manufacturing, now sits on the computers of a majority of practicing structural engineers. Nonlinear analysis, thermal transient analysis and computational fluid dynamics have all entered the field, enabling structural engineers to conduct increasingly sophisticated analysis.

And yet the pace of advancement appears to have left something behind. As structural software has become more complex, it has become practically impossible for engineers to learn and understand every method as it is introduced. This has created an environment in which practicing structural engineers often have a surface level knowledge of the advanced techniques they apply.

Who’s the real structural engineer?

A PhD in the finite element method, an understanding of C++ or fortran programming and ideally an understanding of computer graphics. That is what it takes to work for a structural software development company producing finite element software. That is what it takes to truly comprehend the exact calculations that are being performed each time you click ‘run’. 

And this is just one example of a technique routinely run by today’s structural engineers. With progressively advanced analysis continuing to transition from R&D to the design office, the trend is accelerating and a cognition-complexity divergence has begun to appear. This divergence can be plainly described as this: As analysis that is performed by software grows in complexity, the work performed by structural engineers degrades towards simplicity.

Figure 2. Knowledge and Structural Software Usage.

So rapid has this divergence emerged that many structural engineers’ days are reduced to simple data entry and data translation tasks. For highly educated problem solvers, this creates a profound, distressing problem. A structural engineer is employed to analyse and understand. If more complex and comprehensive analysis results in minimal understanding and simple work,  should practicing structural engineers be using this technology?

Popularity of Hand Calculations

While few structural engineers would consider themselves technophobic, attitudes towards technology can be understood through the popularity of the simplest method: hand calculations. The BuildUp recently conducted a poll of members of the structural engineers group on LinkedIn which showed that hand calculations remain widely popular among structural engineers.

Figure 3. Hand Calculation Usage

Hand calculations, from a computational standpoint, are many orders of magnitudes slower than computational methods, and most other technical professions have left them behind. The archiving and retrieval properties are significantly poorer, and copies are much harder to create. So what is the appeal?

The one benefit of hand calculations is that, unlike all other methods of structural analysis, they force structural engineers to understand every calculation in an analysis. This removes the cognition-complexity divergence emergent in newer advanced analysis. They are an oasis that restores the dignity of the profession and fosters a learning and understanding that all engineers crave.

A Skeptical Future

While this debate will continue amongst engineers in design offices across the world, it is likely a mix of simplified methods and advanced computational methods will continue to coexist. A common belief is that the different approaches reinforce each other, but this has always been a flawed interpretation. There are many more advanced methods that are impossible to validate by hand. The true source of the mix is a widespread skepticism of advanced methods and the new technology delivering them.

And this creates a unique problem for those working or interested in the intersection of structural engineering and technology. How do you build new tech for a skeptical market? How do you build trust in that environment? And how do you expect to grow in such a market? 

Each month we will tackle questions like these and you are welcome to join us on that journey.

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