The BEMNext Laboratory

Publication by former student: Particle-Spring Method for Form Finding Grid Shell Structures consisting of Flexible Members

jeroencoenders — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:26:19 +0000

The BEMNext Lab evolved from the Structural Design Lab (SDL) in Delft. One of the former students of the SDL, Maarten Kuijvenhoven, in collaboration with Pierre Hoogenboom, has published an interesting journal article in the Journal of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (Vol. 53 (2012) No.1 March n. 171) on his graduation work with us on applying the Particle-Spring Method for Form Finding Grid Shell Structures consisting of Flexible Members.

Congratulations, Maarten & Pierre, on this excellent article.

New students at BEMNext Lab

jeroencoenders — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:59:28 +0000

Hi,

Did you already know that we have a number of new students starting new projects at the BEMNext Lab?

We have Peter Eigenraam, who studies curvature analysis of double curved concrete shells.

Eoin Dunphy studies double curved steel shells.

Johan de Haan studies the chances in relation to progressive collapse and Marijn Kok is working on building the next version of the progress collapse tool.

And of course, our veterans, Bastiaan van de Weerd who is developing StructuralComponents 3.0 and Sridevi Koonath-Surendran who is almost done with her work on parametric evaluation of sustainability of steel structures.

If you like to know more or are looking for a thesis topic yourself, feel free to contact us.

Merry X-mas and a Happy New Year!

jeroencoenders — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:30:52 +0000

The BEMNext Lab and Delft University of Technology wish you a merry X-mas and a happy new year!

2011/11/10: Geotechniekdag

jeroencoenders — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 05:13:28 +0000

Jeroen will be speaking at the Geotechniekdag – the Dutch geotechnics event – on the BEM dream.

http://www.geotechniekdag.nl

2011/10/10-2011/10/12: Design modelling workshop in Berlin

jeroencoenders — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:31:47 +0000

Design Modelling Symposium Berlin – 2011
Complexity and Responsibility –Computational Processes and the Physical Production of Space

http://www.design-modelling-symposium.de/

Update: I will be attending this symposium and presenting some of my work on NetworkedDesign here. So if you are interested or would like to meet me, please register and come to this event – Jeroen

2011/09/20-2011/09/23: IASS-IABSE symposium in London, UK

jeroencoenders — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:24:09 +0000

Hi,

We are attending the IASS-IABSE in London, UK the next few days. Seek us out when you would like to meet us. Both Anke and myself will be attending, as well as some of our colleagues at Arup who we are closely collaborating with.

Regards,
Jeroen

New Structural Morphology Group blog

jeroencoenders — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 02:47:34 +0000

Hi,

The Structural Morphology Group (SMG) we are participating in has a new website, which can be found here: http://www.structuralmorphology.org. This group is part of the International Association of Shell and Spatial Structures.

Please feel free to sign up to follow our group or contribute if you want to participate.

- Jeroen

BEMNext: parametric tools for sustainability

jeroencoenders — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 10:26:13 +0000

Exciting news… we are involved in a project where we are designing and developing a framework to be used to analyse and optimise the sustainability (mainly embodied and operational energy) of building. This framework will use a number of analysis components which you can use in parametric software, such as Grasshopper and GenerativeComponents.

We are planning to share this framework with the rest of the world, so that everybody can add new components and use it on his or her projects. Hopefully, this will help our industry to become more aware of its footprint on the environment.

We are looking for collaborators and potential users. If you are interested, please send us an e-mail.

I would like to thank our collaborators so far: Bouwen met Staal (Dutch Steel Institute), Tata steel and Arup.

Keep following us for further announcements on this project.

BEMNext Update: What is the Lab working on?

jeroencoenders — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:39:14 +0000

This is the first update I am writing to those interested in what the BEMNext Lab is doing at the moment: what are we working on?

Well, we are working on many things.

First of all, we are working hard on defining what our research area is and what we want to be involved in. Everybody who says that BEM – built environment modeling – could be anything, is right. On the one hand we need to narrow our scope and define it, so that is becomes clearer what we will be looking at. We are working very hard on this now and in the near future we will update the site with new pages which will give more explanation to the directions we will be diving into.

On the other hand, freedom is nice, because that means that we can venture into unknown territory and explore with restriction. This means we are open to work with everybody who would like to work with us and has an interested problem which we can help to solve. We will carefully manage that we don’t loose this.

So what defines the BEMNext Lab? What can we do? We are experts in applying computational methods (algorithms – optimisation – custom applications and systems – databases – etc.) to design and engineering problems. A lot of our research so far has focused on the design phases in the life-cycle of buildings, because clearly that is where computation is lacking the most and where we can win the most to make other approaches (e.g. BIM) in the later stage more sensible. However, we have a strong link to practice (through Arup) where we are also in touch with the other phases of the life-cycle.

The second thing I would like to mention that we are on a quest to try to find people who have interesting problems (or solutions) in the areas I mentioned. These problems will partly drive our directions of research.

Third, the PhD and MSc students are working hard on their research projects, making good progress. Recently, Tijl Uijtenhaak has finished his graduation project on Multi-Disciplinary Optimisation (MDO) where we explored interesting new possibilities. You will definitely be seeing new projects in this area.

The last exciting thing I would like to mention is that we are writing a proposal for a cluster at SmartGeometry 2012 in Troy, USA on Material Intensities, where we would like to make several collaborative explorations. If you are interested, please feel free to drop me an e-mail and otherwise fingers crossed that we get selected so that you can participate in our workshop cluster!

Well, there are many other things I could talk about, but this post is getting a bit long… to be continued.

See you soon.

- Jeroen

23/06/2011: PhD defence Jeroen Coenders

jeroencoenders — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:55:49 +0000

Jeroen Coenders will defend his dissertation and propositions on June 23, 2011.

The PhD defence ceremony starts with a presentation at 12h00, the official defence 12h30-13h30 and the closing ceremony 13h30-14h00. Afterwards there will be a short reception. The location is the Science Centre of Delft University of Technology, Mijnbouwstraat 120, Delft.

In the evening at 20h00 the official reception will be held at the “Nonnerie” in Delft (http://www.denonnerie.nl/). Feel free to drop by.

For more information:
http://jeroencoenders.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/june-23-2011-phd-defence-jeroen-coenders/