Jacek Wdowicki

Feedback from Users on a Software Product to Improve Its Quality in Engineering Applications

Users’ involvement in a software process is one of strategies for achieving an improvement of software quality. The described research is referred to the software system applied in civil engineering. The continual feedback from users makes possible to learn the user’s point of view and to improve a product just according to her/his notes and expectations. The applied method based on a questionnaire survey has been presented — the layout of questionnaires is the original solution. Four iterations of the collaborative development, including software quality assessment, took place. The level of users’ satisfaction from a product is currently better than that at the beginning.

Dynamic Analysis of Irregular Multistorey Shear Wall Buildings Using Continuous-Discrete Approach

The paper presents an analysis of coupled flexural-torsional vibrations of multi-storey shear wall buildings using continuous-discrete approach. A dynamic model with masses in the form of rigid floor slabs has been adopted. The mass matrix is generated exactly, according to real layout of walls, connecting beams and floor slabs. The flexibility matrix is generated on the basis of the solution of the governing differential equations for a three-dimensional continuous model. In order to verify the presented method, for the first example the free vibration analysis of non-planar, non-symmetrical coupled shear walls, previously analysed in the literature by SAP2000 program, has been chosen. In the second example, the possibility of seismic location of the multistorey building, designed originally in Poznan, stiffened by the asymmetrical system of coupled shear walls, was considered. The analysis, in which a continuous-discrete approach and the response spectrum technique were applied, was carried out by means of DAMB (Dynamic Analysis of Multistorey Buildings) program. The presented method is efficient and can be useful at the preliminary design stage when the solutions for a structure with many various geometrical and physical arrangements are required.