This project aims to develop software tools for seismic capacity assessment and strengthening of existing buildings. We expect the end product resulting from this research to have significant national and international impact, both on human safety, and socioeconomic losses related to seismic protection of infrastructure and the built environment. TOL, the coordinator of the project, is a specialized structural engineering software company. Since 2009, TOL develops and markets RAF, a software suite for the static and seismic analysis and design of building structures, capable of both linear and nonlinear analysis and design adherent to various seismic codes, including Eurocodes and KAN.EPE. The main objective of the project is for TOL, through collaboration with EPPO-ITSAK and FORTH, to upgrade the RAF suite with capabilities for seismic assessment and retrofit of buildings through implementation of state-of-the-art and innovative methods in the fields of Earthquake Engineering and High Performance Computing. TOL plans to market the end product of this project internationally, as existing alternative options offered by competitors lack all of the capabilities already offered by RAF.

Overall, the project will extend RAF with (i) shell and 3D finite elements for linear analysis, (ii) extension of existing pushover analysis with support for steel and masonry structures, (iii) nonlinear time-history analysis, (iv) support for shell finite elements for reinforced concrete shear walls with nonlinear material behavior, (v) a parallelization of the RAF solver engine, and (vi) a cloud-based implementation of the RAF solver engine, able to offer on-demand services for large computations to clients that do not have access to sufficient computing resources.