February 2010
Rockfield open their new office at 155 Hugh Street, Currajong.
We are pleased to advise that Rockfield Technologies Australia Pty Ltd have moved into our new business premises from 1st February 2010. Our company's planned growth and increasing capacity has prompted our move into new offices at:
155 Hugh Street, Currajong, Qld, 4812.
If you are contacting us, all our phone and email details remain the same (07) 4725 5874)
All of the team at Rockfield would like to take the opportunity to thank our clients for their support over the past years and we look forward to providing continued professional engineering services to you all into 2010 from our new engineering office.
November 2009
Engineers Australia North Queensland Engineering Project of the Year 2009
The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, together with Rockfield Technologies Australia have been awarded the First Runner-up in this year's NQ Engineering Project of the Year awards. The technical merit and engineering rigour was recognised at the innaugraul Awards ceremony held at Jupiters Casino in Townsville in November this year.
The Burdekin River Road and Rail Bridge is a North Queensland icon, providing a vital link to the northern tropics. Commissioned in 1957, the bridge has recently celebrated its 50th Birthday and is a testament to industrial development in the mid 20th century. Over the period of the bridge’s life it has seen considerable increases in dead and live loads on the structure. With this in mind, the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) identified the need to gain an improved understanding of bridge loadings and resulting stress patterns that occur in the bridge structure as a result of current and predicted future duty levels. Furthermore, it was identified that a computational tool for evaluating the resistance of the structure to corrosion, fatigue failures, traffic accidents and maintenance procedures (e.g. structural member removal and gantry travel) would assist TMR in optimising the current suite of engineering and maintenance efforts on the structure.
With these goals in mind, the Townsville-based Engineering firm Rockfield Technologies Australia (RTA), in conjunction with the Townsville District TMR office and the TMR Bridge Asset Management group (BAM) have carried out a comprehensive structural assessment of the Burdekin Bridge superstructure.
The project included the application of advanced numerical finite element modelling, combined with engineering measurement technologies and the pooling of technical knowledge from the stakeholders (District TMR, BAM and QR) to provide a detailed understanding of the working stresses of the structure (both historically and predictively for the future). The modelling techniques employed by RTA enabled a comprehensive structural evaluation, with a wide range of Standards based and composite load scenarios applied to the structure. The project results were successful in identifying any potential for critically stressed and fatigue-prone members and connections, which subsequently served to provide a schedule to optimisation structural inspections and maintenance. These schedules translate into direct savings that can be made from the study. In addition, the project and associated modelling has proved highly suitable for understanding the effect of member redundancy and also provides an ability to analyse the full range of structural maintenance procedures and unusual load events (e.g. corrosion repairs, road surfacing, gantry activity and traffic incidents).
August 2009
Rockfield and Town High in F1 Race
A team of year 9 students visited Rockfield Technologies Australia as part of the world wide ‘F1 in Schools’ Design, Make and Race competition. The Townsville State High School students have been designing their F1 car on CAD software since the beginning of the year and will receive input from Rockfield's engineers as preparation for the State F1 in Schools Titles in early October. The students also gained a valuable insight into the application of Computer Aided Design - (CAD) in industry.
The F1 in Schools competition requires the students to use a sophisticated CAD program to design a small scale (200mm) F1 racer and manufacture it in balsa wood on a micro-router located at
The competition, established in
Points are also scored for links with relevant industry and that why the boys are meeting with the engineers from Rockfield – a company specialising in a range of high tech services including Computational Modelling, Design, predictive engineering and measurement and testing.Rockfield displayed the team real world applications for their CAD based skills and an indication of possible future pathways in engineering.