There is no doubt in my mind that Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is the cornerstone of my career. I attribute most of my career successes to both engineering and FEA knowledge. However, when I started, I really hated FEA... it was an intimidating thing I had to do for my Ph.D... and I almost exclusively [...]
I remember well when I first tried to understand buckling. For whatever reason, this was not natural for me. There were so many equations, that didn't make any sense back then! But it's way easier to understand stability thanks to FEA. To go there, we need to find a good answer to a question: what [...]
One of the few difficult things about buckling lengths is, that you need to know if your structure is a "sway" structure or a "non-sway" structure. Commonly the simple check is made with displacements, but unfortunately, it may lead to serious mistakes! Why should you care about sway and non-sway system Firstly, I want to [...]
Symmetry in FEA is great, as it reduces the size of the task. This, in turn, shortens the computing time. Computing time is still a big issue, especially when you run complex models. Without a doubt, this is why using symmetry in FEA is so popular. There is a catch to this, however, as you [...]
Choosing between linear buckling and nonlinear buckling in given case can be difficult. Both approaches have positive and negative aspects. I explain here what are the differences, and when to use each analysis. I promise not to use complicated mathematics, nor highly theoretical approach. Instead, I will use a simple example to easily describe differences. [...]
Buckling is a dangerous phenomenon. It can lead to catastrophic failure of a structure, even if stresses are far smaller than yield limit. You can use linear buckling analysis to verify structural stability. In this post, I will discuss positive aspects and limitations of linear buckling. […]
Lateral torsion buckling (LTB) is a very dangerous phenomenon, that can easily cause the collapse of a poorly designed beam. In civil engineering codes, the critical bending moment is crucial in the proper design of bent beams susceptible to LTB, as it allows for slenderness calculation. In “typical” cases everything is ok since code equations [...]
Topic of linear and nonlinear buckling is one of the most searched FEA topics. It is understandable, since lack of knowledge about the difference in both approaches can lead to great overestimation of model capacity and following real-life instability failure. In this post I will discuss the difference with a shell example. […]