We are pleased to announce that the R&D project called “CFSExpert” led by ConSteel Solution Ltd. has won financial support on the EUROSTARS-2 international R&D funding programme.
The value of the winner project is indicated by the fact that up to now only 22 Hungarian participants won from a total of 182 submissions, which is only a 12% success rate, moreover, in the last 11th call only the ConSteel Solutions Ltd. was awarded from the Hungarian applicants.
What is EUROSTARS?
Eurostars supports international innovative projects led by research and development- performing small- and medium-sized enterprises (R&D-performing SMEs). With its bottom-up approach, Eurostars supports the development of rapidly marketable innovative products, processes and services that help improve the daily lives of people around the world. Eurostars has been carefully developed to meet the specific needs of SMEs. It is an ideal first step in international cooperation, enabling small businesses to combine and share expertise and benefit from working beyond national borders. Eurostars is a joint programme between EUREKA and the European Commission, co-funded from the national budgets of 36 Eurostars Participating States and Partner Countries and by the European Union through Horizon 2020. In the 2014-2020 period, it has a total public budget of €1.14 billion. These programmes are highly market-oriented, which means that in addition to high-level R&D content, a well-grounded marketing strategy and business plan must be submitted. Proposals are ranked centrally by the EU and evaluated by committees of independent international experts.
The winner project
Title:CFSExpert – Structural design tool for cold-formed steel structures
Consortium:ConSteel Solutions Ltd. – Hungary – consortium leader
Universitatea Politehnica Timișoara – Romania
Gordias Srl. – Romania
Date:01.01.2020 – 31.12.2021
The goal of the project is to develop straightforward software tools for practising engineers to use in their projects including cold-formed steel (CFS) profiles of general shape, according to a design based on Eurocode 3 concept. The software is based on an innovative design process which integrates the specific modern mechanical analysis of CFS members (Constrained Finite Strip Method – cFSM) with existing and newly developed design procedures. The software tools will be launched at three levels for different types of target users having the same calculation core including the developed new innovative design methodology. Accordingly, the main R&D result of the project is in this special calculation core, but for the support of an efficient marketing and sales process, it is also aimed to implement it into three different types of software realization. The CFSExpert Structure is a design package implemented into the ConSteel 3D analysis and design software as an additional module for the design of cold formed sections within a general 3D steel structural model. The CFSExpert Member is a stand-alone software configuration to handle a single element, with simply supported or continuous statical system, with specific graphical input and output features limited to cold-formed profiles. The CFSExpert Engine is a “black-box” calculation engine, without graphical user interface, but having standard easy-to-use input-output interface suitable for implementing into any existing or new-to-develop specific design software tools. It is strongly believed that these three different software realizations provide the most efficient way for serving the largest part of practising engineers with the innovation implemented into the calculation core.
