Bentley Systems has acquired ADINA R&D, a Massachusetts-based developer of finite element analysis software applications used in a diverse range of engineering fields. The latter was founded in 1986 by Dr Klaus-Jürgen Bathe, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is recognised for his works in the field of finite element analysis and its applications.
Civil, structural and mechanical engineers have adopted ADINA software for its authoritative veracity, including in analysis of buildings, bridges, stadiums, pressure vessels, dams and tunnels. By virtue of the ADINA Systems’ integral robustness across disciplines, materials and simulation domains, engineers use it to perform safety and performance studies where reliability and resilience are of critical importance.
With infrastructure digital twins, users can simulate the behaviour of structures to create confidence in designs. Of particular importance for infrastructure resilience, ADINA will also be applied within digital twins of existing infrastructure assets, now made practical by the Bentley iTwin platform, to simulate their responses and vulnerabilities to stresses so extreme that non-linear effects much be considered—caused, for instance, by seismic, wind, flood, pressure, thermal, collision or blast forces.
The ADINA Systems’ non-linear simulation capabilities will, in turn, become directly accessible, through technical and commercial integration, to users of Bentley Systems’ modelling and simulation software portfolio for infrastructure engineering. As the ADINA Systems’ non-linear extensions are introduced to complement these existing physical simulations applications, the scope of mainstream simulation underlying the engineering of infrastructure resilience will be valuably enhanced. ADINA’s advantages also include advanced dynamics, 3D solid FEM, buckling, substructing and advanced meshing for critical joints and sections.
