Reliability associated with the use of building structural analysis and design software

Abstract

[EN] Architecture education in Spain presents a vast technical component which includes the capacity for analyzing and designing building structures. The current architectural context encompasses buildings with an increasing structural complexity which demands the necessary use of computer tools. Professionals looking for a building analysis and design software face substantial difficulties when trying to find not only a roster of commercial products available on the market, but also comprehensive studies about their characteristics, especially regarding their functionality and reliability. National codes neither standardize this type of computer tools¿ performance, nor supply guidelines which enable the comparison of their features and performance or, at least, which enable to validate the functioning of a certain one. Simultaneously, available international bibliography is scarce, dispersed and clueless about how to confront these tasks independently. However other neighboring scientific fields have already met the challenge of assessing the implicit risk when using certain products and tools by developing well defined methods with theoretical background, detailed principles and development criteria and quantitative assessment. Most of these methods are based in the comparison of results obtained when using a certain product or tool under controlled conditions with reference results obtained by other means. This way of working is clearly related with test beds and is easily translatable to the field of building structures analysis and design. A testbed based on a conventional building structure would enable current or future users of certain software to compare the results obtained with this application with exact values provided by other tools or methods with proven reliability which strictly apply the current regulations and codes. Thereupon practitioners would have not only an appreciation but even a quantitative assessment of the underlying risk in the use of this software application