Advanced Analysis

Service Overview

Engineering services for specialty structures and unique conditions.

Innovative engineering approaches and sophisticated computer modeling techniques are required to analyze a variety of non-building or complex structures, including nuclear facilities, buried structures, railway vehicles, machines, technology prototypes, radio/optical telescopes, and radar antennae. SGH’s broad computational mechanics and material science expertise positions us to solve our clients’ toughest engineering challenges with practical solutions.

Advancing the meaning of what’s possible.

Specialized Capabilities

Buried Infrastructure

Buried infrastructure facilitates the storage, transmission, and delivery of vital resources. Ensuring long-term performance of pipelines, culverts, buried bridges, tunnels, tanks, and aqueducts requires an understanding of structural behavior, soil-structure interaction, material response, and environmental effects. SGH applies our experience with computational mechanics and testing and field investigation to evaluate the performance and serviceability of these community assets. We help owners and other stakeholders by evaluating reliability and durability, investigating performance problems and failures, and designing repairs to extend the useful life of these critical systems. Our work has been the foundation for many industry design, installation, and inspection standards for a range of structure types.

Nuclear Facilities

Facilities handling nuclear materials have special safety, technology, and regulatory considerations to ensure critical structures, systems, and components (SSCs) are designed to be and routinely evaluated to remain operational. SGH performs engineering services for new and existing nuclear facilities, including structural analysis and design, materials and structural condition assessments, aging management, repair design, seismic evaluation and qualification of SSCs, probabilistic risk assessments, performance-based design, and drop load and impact analyses. Our engineers are recognized as leading structural and seismic engineering consultants and have developed state-of-the-art methodologies adopted by the nuclear industry. SGH maintains a quality assurance program for our work on nuclear facilities that has been audited by our clients.

Science & Defense Structures

The science and defense industry regularly pushes the envelope of what has been done before. By combining advanced analysis and structural engineering capabilities with our experience in testing and materials science, SGH can design and evaluate structures that are one-of-a-kind. Our knowledge of mechanics and structural behavior allows us to develop design criteria and evaluation methodologies for unique and challenging performance requirements, including precision tolerances, extreme environments, dynamic vibrations, multi-physics loadings, functional reliability, and life-cycle engineering. We have many years of experience inspecting, analyzing, designing, and modifying existing and new science and defense structures.

Failure Analysis

When systems or components perform poorly or fail, stakeholders need accurate answers to important and often difficult questions. SGH helps our clients understand the technical causes (the physical explanation of what went wrong) and procedural causes (why it happened and who is responsible). We apply an understanding of industry practices and resources with our multidisciplinary engineering, materials science, and laboratory testing capabilities to explain building, structural, and material failures. Our disciplined approach to fact gathering and analysis produces accurate and unbiased findings that can withstand the toughest scrutiny.

Computational Mechanics

SGH uses computational mechanics to simulate and predict complex structural and material behavior. We employ a wide range of analytical approaches, including static, dynamic, stability, transient, thermal, and nonlinear effects. In collaboration with our materials scientists and our in-house advanced testing facilities, we can develop custom constitutive/material models for analysis of special applications. SGH maintains computing facilities with active licenses for a wide range of general purpose and application specific finite element solvers.

AI & Automation

Artificial intelligence and automation can help us solve complicated engineering challenges more efficiently. Our teams of programmers, software developers, and engineers create custom data and geometry workflows. These project-specific solutions allow us to perform complex parametric studies, evaluate numerous project options and iterations in real time, interact with our clients to evaluate design changes, automate calculations and data collection, and graphically represent project decisions.

Breaking barriers with cutting-edge analyses.

client solutions

New Construction

Designing new elements of our built environment

Failure Investigation

Uncovering what went wrong

Repair & Rehabilitation

Extending the life of structures and infrastructure

Preservation

Restoring and protecting our most treasured buildings and artifacts

Evaluation

Analyzing conditions and advancing innovation

Featured Projects

South

Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant, Units 3 & 4

SGH designed Seismic Category I structures at the Comanche Peak nuclear facility for preparation of Combined Operating License Application. SGH analyzed the original structural configuration and seismic input, and reanalyzed and designed them four years later with revised geometry and loading.

Explore

Northeast

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Haystack Radar Antenna Elevation Structure

Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Lincoln Laboratory initiated a major upgrade of the Haystack radar antenna requiring replacement of the elevation structure. The upgrade program was jointly sponsored by the United States Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.