The founder of WBI, Prof. Wittke, feels himself highly committed to scientific research and development (R&D) works in engineering from the very beginning of his activity. As a company, being founded as spin-off of the RWTH Aachen, we joined this commitment. Therefore, we take a lot of effort, to bring forward the engineering science in the field of geotechnical engineering. In this context, we place great emphasize on the practical relevance and application of our R&D works.

One focus of our R&D work is the realistic modeling of the interaction between ground and structures. Special emphasis is placed on rock mechanics and rock hydraulics.

The corresponding mechanical and hydraulic models are being implemented in numerical analyses procedures (Finite Elements) in the program systems FEST03 and HYD03.

Due to the large efforts which we have made during the last decades, we meanwhile play leading roles in many fields of our activities. Exemplarily the fields of tunneling in swelling rock and soils as well as the creep and permeability of salt and salt rock should be mentioned. Apart from that, we have developed in our laboratory materials for construction of slurry trench walls in an extremely saline environment.

We will commit ourselves to scientific research and development work also in the future, because

nowadays research guarantees the job tomorrow.

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