| Engineering is fundamentally concerned with finding practical solutions to problems posed by the physical conditions in which people live. In particular, civil and structural engineering seeks to transform the environment in which people live and work by designing and creating better structures, facilities and tools. While many in the developed world enjoy great benefits from widespread and effective deployment of structural engineering, not all problems have been solved, structural infrastructure is in consistent need of maintenance, natural disasters require reconstruction and not all places are equally well-developed.;For these reasons, it is beneficial to make it easier to perform engineering work. One way to do this is to broaden and assist the pool of expertise available. As one means to that end, this work proposes that some of the understanding gained in software design could be applied to other design domains, such as structural design. Software designers use software tools to manage and enhance interactions amongst themselves. This includes software programs for manipulating software code, compiling programs, performing automated tests, recording changes, tracking bugs and more.;Extrapolating the ideas of software-mediated collaboration into other domains requires analogous tools to be created. In the case of structural design, this includes software for modifying structural designs, evaluating designs through simulation, and discussing designs and simulation results. To explore this idea, a prototype system was created for user collaboration and simulation of structures under wind load. This Virtual Wind Tunnel (VWT) allows users to upload, discuss and collaborate upon proposed building geometries, incorporates powerful CFD simulators and directs such simulations to high-throughput back-end systems. Developing the VWT required key software components to manage the interactions between various software and intellectual domains, most particularly a compiler to create fluid simulations from uploaded building geometries. To demonstrate the VWT and its adaptability to various applications, it has been deployed for multiple educational and research projects. In particular, an exploration was made of the use of crowdsourcing for complex engineering tasks. These deployments involved dozens of users, including experts, students and members of the general public, running thousands of CFD tasks to completion. |
