Tackle any structural engineering challenge including fabric structure design with this complete design and analysis package. Structural engineers working on buildings, bridges and tensile structures need a comprehensive design program.Tackle any structural engineering challenge including fabric structure design with this complete design and analysis package. Structural engineers working on buildings, bridges and tensile structures need a comprehensive design program.

Whatever you want to achieve with your tensile or compression-only structure design, GSA Suite has the answer

GSA Suite is the essential tool for anyone designing tensile or gridshell structures. By taking care of form-finding and fabric analysis, this ingenious software leaves you free to focus on your design.
Form-finding and fabric analysis

How do you make tensile structures the right shape to resist applied loads or cope with highly non-linear fabric materials? GSA Suite solves both of these problems for you, using form-finding and fabric analysis to give you the answers you need.

With dynamic relaxation GSA Suite finds the optimal geometry for your structure. The software uses soap film or force-density form-finding for fabric structures, cable net structures and pure compression or tension structures.

GSA Suite’s easy-to-use interface and online help mean you’ll be creating and sculpting models in no time. A spreadsheet-friendly file format and smooth interaction with other tools make this software the perfect choice.

Originally developed in-house at Arup, GSA Suite has already proved its worth on projects such as ‘The Water Cube’ National Aquatics Centre in Beijing and the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Form finding

Finding the correct geometry and prestress forces for tension only structures such as fabric structures, fabric roofs and cable nets is crucial: mistakes lead to wrinkles, flapping, and ponding problems. While some programs will generate geometry that looks nice, GSA Suite will find the geometry that is right. GSA Suite gives you the control to offset the effects of fabric to cable prestress, radial to circumferential stresses, and more.

GSA Suite also enables you to generate the organic geometry for compression-only structures such as grid shells and slender arches.

GSA Suite uses its powerful dynamic relaxation non-linear solver to form find using soap film, force density and structural properties to find the optimum structural arrangement, and then analyse and design it to all the serviceability and ultimate loads.

Footfall analysis / human induced vibration

As designs become more efficient, the resulting structures get lighter and more responsive to human induced vibrations. This means that footfall induced vibration is becoming an important serviceability design requirement for office and residential buildings, foot bridges and staircases: it is an essential requirement for demanding situations such as hospitals and laboratories.

GSA Suite enables you to find the footfall response over the whole structure, with full contour plots and detailed graphs showing exactly where the satisfactory and problem areas are. You can thus explore cost-effective design solutions and advise you client on how their structure will respond to human induced vibration.
Soil-structure interaction

GSA Suite is perfect for busy foundation designers as it enables you to analyse how your structure interacts with the ground for optimum design. This easy-to-use software combines non-linear structural and geotechnical models to calculate accurate settlements, soil pressures, bending moments and other structural stresses in a fraction of the time.

GSA Suite adds the acclaimed Pdisp soil pressure displacement engine to GSA Suite’s finite element analysis. The structure then interacts with the ground via piles, rafts or pads so they both work together to carry the load, whatever the structure, whatever the soil. GSA Suite also integrates with Pdisp, importing soil models and exports results for further geotechnical investigation.
Steel design

Check your steel structure to a number of international design codes, whether American, British, European, Australian, Indian, Hong Kong or South African.
Concrete slab and wall design

Calculate the reinforcement requirements for concrete slabs and walls to international codes from America, Britain, Europe, Australia, Indian, Hong Kong or South Africa. GSA Suite takes into account not just the bending moments, but also all torsion and in-plane forces to ensure that your structure is designed for all the forces it experiences.

Output the results in both scaled contour plots for rationalisation and design calculations for both sensible construction and design confidence.
Nonlinear analysis

Analyse structures with large (and indeed very large) deflections, plastic yielding of materials, snap-through, sway effects, and more. GSA Suite uses the dynamic relaxation method to enable you to analyse structures that other programs will not touch.
Buckling

GSA Suite enables you to calculate the buckling load factors on a range of structures, from complex frames to shell structures and lateral torsional buckling of plate girders. It also includes non-linear buckling effects so you can plot the deflections of columns and struts against load to accurately assess safety factors.
Dynamic analysis and response

GSA Suite includes both modal analysis for calculation of the natural dynamic frequencies of your structure and Ritz analysis specially designed for seismic response calculations. You can choose to include axial load effects to change stiffnesses in both these methods.

Following on from the modal or Ritz analysis, GSA Suite enables you to calculate the structural response using a number of dynamic post processors, including seismic response to multiple international codes, linear time history, harmonic loads for vibrating machinery, and more.
Stages

With staged analysis you can assess the model at any stage in construction, remove elements, and change sections and restraints, all coordinated in a single model.

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