The Droneport incubator building at the former Brustem air base is a curved concrete office building with an unusual floor plan, built alongside a steel structure for testing drones. Macobo (now M-gineers) used Diamonds to model the building’s curved geometry and the unusual load cases it creates, and values the software’s fast recalculation times for quickly iterating on the design.
Structural design of the unusual
The Droneport project
As Macobo’s Structural Design team leader (now M-gineers), ing. Liesbeth Torfs is closely involved in highly diverse projects. She’s more than happy to comment on some of the recent and current projects that her team has worked on. “A project which appeals to the imagination,” Liesbeth says “is the new test and business center for drones at the former air base of Brustem (Belgium). This so-called Droneport incubator building, which is the result of a collaboration between investment company LRM and the city of Sint-Truiden, will provide facilities to support start-ups and research initiatives related to the drone industry. dbv-architecten is in charge of the architectural design, while Macobo takes care of technical aspects.
A curved concrete office building next to a steel test hangar
Next to the Droneport office building, a steel structure will provide space for testing drones. The office building itself is designed as a concrete structure. Seen from the air, it has an unusual curved shape. Inside the building, open spaces can be rearranged to accommodate for changing office needs. On the roof of this appealing building, a terrace is planned to give a magnificent view of the surroundings.
Modelling a curved building’s unusual load cases
The curved shape of this building and the type of loads that need to be accounted for in the structural design analysis make this project a great example of how Diamonds helps us easily realize even the most challenging building structures. “
Fast recalculation, fast onboarding
Calculation times are a definite plus of Diamonds. Because Diamonds allows us to recalculate a structural design in just a matter of minutes, we firmly improve our agility as an engineering team. Also, Diamonds’ great ease of use is essential to us in our day-to-day tasks as structural engineers. If a new colleague strengthens our team (and in a fast growing company like Macobo, that happens frequently), it only takes a few days at the most to get up to full speed with Diamonds. I don’t know of any other structural design analysis software that makes this possible” Liesbeth Torfs concludes.
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M-gineers
M-gineers is a multidisciplinary engineering office created from the merger of the engineering firms JAN VAN AELST, STABO and MACOBO. Today we work together as one entity in the disciplines of Stability, Building Techniques, Sustainability, Acoustics and Safety.
M-gineers was founded in 2008 by ing. Davy Macquoi and has organically grown from customer needs. With our family of around 125 in-house construction professionals, our mission is to serve the construction sector with a wide range of the most current architectural studies, which are well coordinated with each other and carried out by the best engineers, using the most modern technologies. As a result, we facilitate the construction process for all construction partners, we promote a profitable project for our customers and we guarantee a sustainable construction for society.
Customer since : 2012
