Structural truth for vernacular buildings.
Assess and strengthen adobe, traditional timber, and stone masonry — with heritage damage factors, EN 1998-3 knowledge levels, and a defensible, code-referenced report an engineer can cite.
17 verification cases — hand calculations and published worked examples, pinned as regression tests. This stamp is earned, not drawn.
Built for conservation engineers
General FEM packages have no adobe, no palm or athel timber, no damage factors, no ICOMOS logic. VernaStruct is a specialised member checker for traditional construction — fast, code-referenced, and honest about its assumptions.
Roofs
Round-timber joists and steel or bundled-trunk main beams, with the traditional earth-layer dead-load stack built in.
Walls
Adobe compression, shear with the hard code cap, H/t limits, wind and seismic in-plane checks, overturning.
Columns
Compression-plus-bending interaction with slenderness, including a tapered palm-trunk preset — a section no other tool has.
Foundations
Strip and pad bearing with Meyerhof effective width, elastic settlement against the masonry serviceability criterion.
Damage factors
Observed deterioration derates capacity — 1.00 sound to 0.50 severe — stated explicitly in every report, per element.
Knowledge levels
How well you know the material is a second, orthogonal axis: KL1–KL3 confidence factors divide strengths before design.
Real output, real numbers
From an anonymised assessment scenario — a damaged adobe house under seismic load — exported directly by the app, unedited.
The desktop app, reimagined in glass.
The interface direction for the next generation of VernaStruct: the same four modules and honest verdicts, floating in one calm surface. Numbers below are a real run — a 3 m mud-brick wall, moderate damage, KL2.
Wall — Mud Brick (Handmade)
SBC 902-2024 §806 · damage 0.75 · KL2 CF 1.20Checks
Static concept mock — the production app runs on the verified engine shown in the numbers above.
Verified before it is sold
Nobody should trust structural software on faith. Every check is pinned against an independent hand calculation or a published worked example — and the full manual ships with the product.
| Case | Cross-check source | Module | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| VC-13 | Structville, published EN 1995-1-1 worked example | codes.ec5 | PASS |
| VC-14 | Structville, published EN 1996-1-1 worked example | codes.ec6 | PASS |
| VC-15 | Swedish Wood, official Eurocode 5 textbook (Vol. 3) | codes.ec5 | PASS — caught a real defect |
| VC-16 | Published NTC / Circolare 2019 assessment practice | codes.knowledge | PASS |
| VC-17 | Published EN 1993-1-1 section tables (HEB200, Class 1) | codes.ec3 | PASS |
- Adobe out-of-plane bending overstated 1000× — N·m read as kN·m; unconservative. Fixed, pinned. VC-03
- Pad-footing pressure overstated 1000× — the pad branch had never been numerically exercised. VC-04
- Governing utilization omitted creep — long-term deflection missing from the reported maximum. VC-05
- Column stability factor shortcut — CP forced to 1.0 for stocky columns, ~4% unconservative. VC-06
- EC5 shear crack factor missing — §6.1.7 kcr = 0.67 omitted; shear understated 1.49×. Caught by the Swedish Wood textbook example. VC-15
- Default beam section modulus digit-swap — HEA200 Wx 368.5 vs published 388.6 cm³; caught by the library-wide Wx ≈ 2Ix/h consistency test. Library integrity
Built by a heritage structural engineer.
Verified like one.
VernaStruct is entering closed beta for conservation engineers — free beta access and a free v1.0 license for structured feedback.
Request a beta invite