Sophware is dedicated to providing productivity tools for Civil Engineers, Environmental Engineers, Scientists and other practitioners in the areas of Structural Analysis and Design and in Environmental analysis.
These software tools have been developed from direct experience providing consulting services, software installation and training over the past 50 years. These services have been provided to major industrial clients including Telecom, Petroleum Refining, Automotive, Nickel and Copper Smelting and Refining, Steel Production and Power Generation and Transmission.
The goals in developing the software are to streamline and simplify the practitioner's tasks but without sacrificing the accuracy and completeness of the analysis in meeting the codes and standards. This is done by ensuring that the software can be used by new and casual users to confidently perform the complete tasks, and can be used by experienced users who want to get a deeper understanding of the situation and explore solutions using built-in interactive algorithms.
The design of structures such as towers and buildings requires the engineer to account for the influence of external forces such as wind pressure and ice accumulation on the structure. For tall structures such as communication or broadcast towers and transmission line towers the wind force will vary with height, and must meet the risk based reliability criteria as specified in building codes.
Codes such as ASCE7 and TIA 222 in the US and CSA S37 in Canada provide maps of the basic extreme wind and provide procedures for calculating the vertical wind profile based on terrain type and topographic influences which are based on Guidelines derived from meteorological considerations.
These procedures are of necessity overly simplified and cannot deal with the complex situations encountered in the real world. This is acknowledged in the Codes which suggest, and in some cases require, that detailed site-specific analysis should be carried out.
The Profile application has been developed over the past 15 years to deal with simple and complex meteorological situations and topographic situations in order to provide reliable wind profiles using measured data from nearby airports and applying tested procedures. This application has been used by ICE Inc. to provide site-specific analysis for towers and structures for clients Internationally.
The application is described in detail at
Codes such as ASCE7 and TIA 222 in the US and CSA S37 in Canada provide maps of the basic extreme wind and provide procedures for calculating the vertical wind profile based on terrain type and topographic influences which are based on Guidelines derived from meteorological considerations.
The Profcode application provides an interface for the user to enter the required parameters of Basic Wind Speed, Exposure Category, and Topographic specification (Type of feature, Height, Length) and performs the profile calculation according to the specified Building Code. The output is provided graphically as well as in spreadsheet file format to permit direct use of the results in design software or reporting.
The application is described in detail at
Compliance with Air Quality Regulations requires demonstration of the impact of an industrial facility on the surrounding environment. Most regulations specify the use of an authorized application and the inputs required for the application. These inputs include the hourly meteorological parameters, the specification of all emitting sources within the facility and the emissions from these sources, as well as the locations where the concentrations need to be calculated (receptors).
Many jurisdictions in the US and Canada specify the AERMOD model for this purpose. This model was developed for the US EPA with guidance from the American Meteorological Association and is regularly updated and improved.
This model is recognized internationally for impact assessment. However, the use of the model requires a substantial amount of formatted input from the user, including hourly meteorological data using the AERMET pre-processor, source emission data and source characteristics for a large number of different source types, and facility building layout among others. The computation burden for a large facility is accordingly very large, which can require up to several days of processing time per year of meteorology for a large facility such as a steel plant or refinery.
Sophware has developed a Windows interface which provides the facilities for creating the necessary inputs, and a computational methodology to reduce the large CPU time requirements by hundreds of times compared to the use of the AERMOD executable. This method additionally allows for an interactive mode of performing reruns and what-if scenarios without the need for creating input files for each run.
The application is described in detail at
The preparation of an Emission Inventory for an industrial facility is a requirement for Environmental Compliance and generally takes a large effort involving environmental personnel, operating personnel, process engineering support, and dispersion modeling knowledge.
Sophware has developed a Windows interface which provides the facilities for creating a comprehensive description of a facility of any size by describing every process in terms of its sources of emissions, their full composition, and the emission points receiving the emission streams.
The data describing the process, source and emission streams is stored in a database and provides a historical record of any changes over time. The user creates the emission rate calculation procedures which can range from simple emission factors to complex computations written in MS Basic.
The interface permits the user to select the current or any historical period and view or report the calculated emissions for the period. The database relations set up for the process permit a multi to multi view, so the user can view or report all emissions by source for a selected process, or conversely view or report all sources and processes which contribute to a specified emission point.
Extensive reporting facilities including source emission summary which lists all chemical emissions from each source or a list of all sources which emit a selected chemical. The latter also permits the generation of detailed emissions by emission point as required for modeling input.
The application is described in detail at