The American Concrete Institute (ACI) Fall Convention - 2008

Practical Use of Finite Element Analysis in the Design of Concrete Structures

The ACI-ASCE Committee 447, Finite Element Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Structures and the ACI Committee 118 Use of Computers are seeking papers for a joint technical session titled Practical Use of Finite Element Analysis in the Design of Concrete Structures . The session is tentatively scheduled for the ACI Fall Convention to be held in St Louis, MO November 2-6 2008.

We are extending a call for papers that present a "practical application" of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) that is used to facilitate the design or analysis of concrete structures. We wish to bring to the surface practical uses of computers and FEA to real world problems that engineers can apply to their every day experience or are already applying to their everyday experience.

The FEA software used in the design techniques presented should be readily available to any practitioner, either commercially or freely. Both general purpose and special purpose software is of interest. Custom preprocessing, post-processing or scripting of FEA software is also of interest if the techniques illustrated are within the grasp of most practitioners.

Papers illustrating any use of FEA for the design or analysis of any concrete structure or portion thereof will be considered, for example the design and analysis of LNG tanks, soil structure interaction, slabs/pavements, beam-column structures, bridges, liquid storage tanks, office buildings, parking structures etc. As outlined above, it is more desirable that the paper presents a "practical" approach using a readily available FEA application rather than a "research" oriented paper using computers or software that is proprietary and not available to the practitioner. However, we will accept all submissions regardless of the design problem or how the design was investigated and if not used for this presentation it may well be a candidate for future presentations.

Currently, we need a title and abstract for the presentation, the presentation should be 20-25 minutes in length including 5 minutes for questions. Please be prepared to submit a copy by email allan.bommer@bentley.com and preferably a MS PowerPoint file so it can be made available for download from the ACI web page.

Periodic updates and status of the papers we have received and also reminders will be sent when you should have your papers prepared and submitted in a timely manner. We know everyone works for a living and these reminders will help to keep you informed of important submission dates.

For more information, please visit: http://www.concrete.org/general/home.asp .

or, email Ryan Riehle .