Managing structural design through integrated models and obtaining increased safety and economy

The use of large finite element (FE) models for the design of reinforced concrete elements in nuclear power plants will be treated. For this technique a set of computer programs is necessary, since the amount of data is very large. With this design method a series of advantages is obtained such as: reduction of reinforcing steel expenditure, increase of safety through a better representation of the structures, an adequate control of the calculation due to the transparent method of design, reduction of design time due to the automatic computation and so on