A slip formed concrete grain elevator was reported to have evidence of distress due to “construction defects”. Plaintiff’s expert identified construction defects as the root cause. The alleged defects were largely based on the assumption of misplaced reinforcing steel within the slip forms walls. On-site investigations using ground penetrating radar did not confirm the presence of defects. The misuse of linear finite element modeling on the part of the plaintiff’s expert also resulted in numerous errors being presented to the court in expert testimony.
GES Tech Group was retained by the defendant to investigate the plaintiff’s conclusions that were largely based on finite element modeling. Numerous errors were subsequently identified based on finite modelling procedures and selection of the finite element processors.
A key error was the application of a linear elastic formulation for a clearly non-linear condition. This resulted in geometric non-linearity errors in the analysis and led to significant errors in the plaintiff’s expert testimony.
Application by GES Tech Group of non-linear FEA on behalf of the defendant later proved that both design and construction were sound.
