Integration of BIM and FEA in Automation of Building and Bridge Engineering Design

Current development in structural engineering allows designers to create efficient and controlled structural systems, which lead into savings in terms of financial cost, time consumption and lack of lucidity in structural designs. Building Information Modeling (BIM) creates a great opportunity for cooperation of individual experts within one project to maximize an efficiency of the design and minimize errors between concrete details of the entire design and management process. Physical behavior of structures could be currently controlled with high accuracy by applying numerical simulations using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Full integration of BIM and FEA allows complex monitoring of structural design during the entire development through initial design, manufacturing processes, and construction through the structures' life-cycle. The presented paper deals with experiences of major bridge and building engineering projects concerning interoperability of BIM and FEA. Future vision of BIM and FEA integration considering current key findings in the visionary model are also presented. Most of BIM software already enable interoperability of BIM and FEA, however certain issues are still not achieved, especially considering extraordinary geometry characteristics of structures. Because of incomplete interoperability of BIM and FEA, engineers apply them separately, which in turn impairs efficiency of the design. Bridge and building engineers play major role in software applicability and development as well as software developers. The errors occurred during a design should be reported to software developers to improve the applicability and minimize errors in the future structural designs.