Funny how sometimes two different things will cross your desk within a very short time but are actually linked to each other. Late on Sunday, evening after the family had all settled in, I jumped onto Google to look for the latest research being done using ANSYS (of course). I found an interesting paper titled “A Magnetic Flux Leakage and Magnetostrictive Guided Wave Hybrid Transducer for Detecting Bridge Cables.” With infrastructure cost debates going on continually, I thought it would make for an interesting read. Turns out, our software was used to study the magnetic flux density of a suspension cable and the attraction between the transducer and the cable.

Then this morning, one of my U.S. colleagues pointed me to an article where the Pennsylvania Auditor General is calling for the passage of an infrastructure bill. Many of you may not know, but Pennsylvania has some of the worst bridges in North America. In fact, according the auditor general’s report, “Pennsylvania motorists are 10 times more likely to pass a structurally deficient bridge than a McDonald’s restaurant.” Either PA has a LOT of bridges or not many McDonald’s. I’ll assume the former, but I digress. Back to our infrastructure problems. Continue reading →