Engineering Software
Most engineering calculation still lives in undocumented spreadsheets that nobody can test. These articles are about the alternative: small, tested, versioned tools that record their assumptions, produce the same answer twice, and can be handed to someone else without a phone call.
3 articles
Geotechnical FEM verification: the KATAI 2D benchmark suite
How an open-source geotechnical finite element engine is verified: closed-form solutions, published benchmarks and the results, with every tolerance stated.
Floating point: why two runs of one model disagree
Floating-point addition is not associative. Summing the same thousand contributions in another order moves the answer by 360 units in the last place.
CPT interpretation: from qc and fs to Ic and su
A cone reading is not a soil type. Between them sit an area correction, two normalisations and a factor nobody measures — worked through on one sounding depth.
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Related topics
Verification
Verification and validation of engineering software: closed-form benchmarks, tolerance selection, regression suites and what makes a result trustworthy.
Geotechnical FEM
Finite element modelling for geotechnical problems: element families, plane-strain and axisymmetric idealisation, staged construction and solver behaviour.
Scientific Computing
The implementation layer beneath engineering analysis: floating-point determinism, memory layout, sparse data structures and the C that carries a solver.
Site Data
Working with site investigation data: CPT and borehole records, correlations and their limits, automating the path from raw field data to design parameters.