13-12-2019 | Posted by Principia
Our archives treasure a cork from a champagne bottle with a few initials and a date: 12 December 1979. The bottle was opened on occasion of the signature at Freshfields law offices in London of all the paperwork required for the commencement of Principia’s activities. The company, initially based in London, operates from Madrid since 1984, dedicated to consultancy in computational mechanics and to software sales, training and support.
In our capacity as consulting engineers, in the course of these four decades we have written over 1500 proposals for consultancy work, carried out more than 700 projects and studies, and contributed well over 200 technical papers to journals and conferences. Our consulting activity spans a wide spectrum of industrial sectors, concentrating in structural and fluid mechanics, with particular emphasis on dynamic, non-linear, and other hard problems.
In the software area, we initially had no choice but to develop our own codes for nonlinear dynamics (PR2D and PR3D) but, as of 1988, we became a partner to what was then HKS, later to become Abaqus, and eventually incorporated by Dassault Systèmes. We are currently a Platinum Partner of Dassault Systèmes, active not just with Abaqus, but also with all the SIMULIA products, CATIA and the new 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. Over that time, we have organised 22 user conferences and attended many more, given more than 300 training courses, and dealt with over 3000 support queries.
We have found an excellent synergy between the consultancy work and the software activities. The analyses that we perform as consultants make us a superior guide, trainer and support provider for our software customers. And, conversely, having to deal with the problems posed by our software customers greatly enhances our capacity to handle new consultancy assignments.
Our work, both as consultants and in the software area, is really fascinating. Since the objectives are formulated by the clients, each project is a new challenge, often unexpected, which we face provided with our knowhow, tools and experience. Our only goal is to achieve full satisfaction from the client, who came trusting our capabilities and who, if we succeed, will spread our reputation and return next time he has a problem. Apart from the satisfaction we all experience when coming out from a challenge with flying colours.
We look forward to the next 40 years… and counting.
