Invitation to the HyBridGen project kick-off, live-streamed on May 7

There are many reasons why bridges are an integral part of infrastructure: They allow us to cross natural barriers and create links between regions and communities, promoting the exchange of goods, services and people and strengthening social and economic integration. However, given the current state of Germany's bridges, there will be a high demand for new bridges in the near future. Fast planning and approval processes are essential if we are to meet this demand.

Until now, bridges have been designed by engineers on the basis of their individual knowledge and experience. On the one hand, this leads to fluctuations in design quality. On the other hand, complex and lengthy planning steps are necessary before the public can be presented with comprehensible planning results and thus be included in decisions on infrastructure measures.

Now, the joint research project “HyBridGen - Hybrid Bridge Generator” has been launched with the participation of TUD. The project is being funded by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV) with a total of EUR 2.7 million as part of the mFUND innovation initiative. The project seeks to develop an almost completely automated bridge generator. The generator will use artificial intelligence (AI) in the early planning phase to create plausible bridge designs based on processed data sets from the BMDV, engineering expertise and experience as well as project-specific boundary conditions. AI will generate the bridge designs and also make them easier to explain to others. To this end, a human-machine interaction (HMI) is being developed to decipher what are usually very complex and multi-layered infrastructure projects, making them more understandable to the general public. This makes it easier to explain and clarify interconnections to the public, which in turn should ultimately increase the acceptance of infrastructure construction measures. A comprehensive database with interdisciplinary requirements is being developed to train the AI algorithms. To this end, scientists are researching complex methods of data processing for construction data. At the end of the research project, the results will be tested by the project consortium in a pilot project in the Central German lignite mining region.

© Stefan Gröschel, TU Dresden

The Institute of Concrete Structures at TU Dresden is leading the interdisciplinary project consortium. The Chair of Computing in Engineering at Ruhr University Bochum, SSF Ingenieure AG (Halle an The Saale), A+S Consult GmbH (Dresden), elevait GmbH & Co. KG (Dresden), Züblin Stahlbau GmbH (Hosena), Drees & Sommer (Aachen), and the Bundesstiftung Baukultur (Potsdam) are also involved in the project. The consortium is being supported by associated partners from the construction sector. The State Road Construction Authority for Saxony-Anhalt, Autobahn GmbH, Allplan GmbH, RWE Power AG, and AFRY Deutschland are all represented on the project advisory board.

More about the project:
https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/DE/Artikel/DG/mfund-projekte/hybridgen.html

We cordially invite you to attend the public segment of the HyBridGen kick-off meeting.

Time May 7, 2024, 9:00 am to 11:00 am

Location: https://tu-dresden.zoom-x.de/j/64397439544?pwd=UDdzQk1SZDAzeWhkZTNtakQvNStwUT09

You will find the program details here.

Project contact:
Mengyan Peng, M. Sc.
Institute of Concrete Structures
Faculty of Civil Engineering

Public relations contact:
Stefan Gröschel
Institute of Concrete Structures
Faculty of Civil Engineering
stefan.grö