Our specialisms

We have gained our experience in aerospace, offshore and heavy mechanical industry. For structural design, we have an overview of what is necessary from start to end. We have experience in:

• Structures engineering;
• Lifting and handling of structures;
• Fatigue and fracture mechanics;
• Reinforced fibre plastics design;
• Post buckling behaviour;
• Vibration analyses;
• Impact analyses.

Structural engineering

AeroMech Support have experience within a wide range of construction types. Offshore constructions like Jackets, Jack-ups, FPSO specialties and Vessel modifications. We also contributed in the JSF project (aerospace).  We have dealt with a lot of engineering challenges. They are always special. Other more common engineering tasks that repeat in every engineering project can also consume a lot of engineering time. These are tasks like iterations and compilation of justification reports.  These tasks are automated.  The time we save with these automations can be used for the real engineering challenges. 

Fatigue and damage tolerance (fracture mechanics)

Constructions don't last forever.  Weather influences like wind and waves have their detrimental influences on the construction. But also corrosion, initiated by moisture or fretting has its influences on the economic life of the construction.  How to deal with these influences? Aeromech can assist in this by the determination of the economical fatigue life of the construction including the determination of inspection intervals, if required.

Common techniques are rainflow cycle counting of load spectrums, the Pramgren Minor-rule used for fatigue calculations (together with the suitable SN curve for variable amplitude loading) and Paris-law for crack growth.  But are also familiar with software packages as AFGROW including all kind of other crack growth theories. We are familiar with procedures for non-welded as for welded constructions.

Fiber Reinforced Plastics

Fibre Reinforced Plastics or composites are not that indulgent like steel. They are elastic till they break suddenly.  No yielding! How to use these materials in design?  How to treat impact loads with the danger of delamination?

AeroMech is specialized in how to design with these materials. Also post-processing fibre reinforced composite structures can be a time consuming job. This is why an in-house tool has been developed to accelerate the analyses and optimize the constructions.

Post-buckling analysis

Elastic buckling doesn't have to be the maximum capacity of the structure. For example, the capacity due to shear buckling can be up to 5 times the elastic buckling load. How to

determine this capacity effectively when a lot of load cases matter?  Since each post buckling analysis is one non-linear FEM calculation, the analysis

of a structure can be very time consuming. AeroMech has solutions for saving engineering time.

On the right side you see a suction pile (used in the offshore industry) loaded under uniform pressure. The model is generated including maximum tolerance bands to trigger buckling. First the linear buckles are shown with mode shapes as also calculated by the Eigenvalue analysis. After the maximum load is reached the structure collapses and the resistance against the applied pressure load decreases as shown in the graph below.

Vibration analysis

How to handle vibrations in constructions? How to isolate vibrations? How to influence the Natural frequency of a structure?

These questions can be solved by various vibration analyses, for instance:

• Finding the normal modes.
• Finding the transfer function (as shown on the left).
• Performing an earthquake analysis using a response spectrum analysis.

Aeromech Support can assist with these.

Impact analysis

Boat impact is a very important load case with offshore constructions.  Risers need to be prevented from damage due to boat impact.  But how to design such constructions?  How to design the structure such that it is capable to take the impact energy.

The image shows a boat impact analysis on a boat landing.  The boat landing must be capable to take the energy from the impact. The structure must include a sudden 'crumple zone' to ensure the impact wouldn't result in damaging the vessel or breaking through the boat landing structure.

AeroMech has experience with such kind of constructions.  We'll solve this for you.

Method development: the KBE solution 

Aeromech Support is the post processing specialist. Nowadays knowledge based engineering (KBE) is becoming more necessary to cut down valuable engineering time. We have the ability to improve and speed up the design and analysis of structures by dedicated written software. Our goal is to increase the effectiveness of your engineering by optimizing and synchronizing engineering activities.