I must confess, that I haven't always pay attention to mesh size. At the beginning of my career, I simply build my models and was happy when they converged. I was vaguely (and I mean vaguely!) aware, that the element size does "something". But I was absolutely happy with whatever default options were set! Now [...]
My relationship with 3D FEA is definitely love and hate. There are things I think are critical, and those that are completely unnecessary most of the time. Let's take a deeper look into this today! 3D FEA has an advantage: there are things that you simply cannot solve in 2D. But of course, this doesn't [...]
I think that many engineers, especially in the structural field, start FEA to calculate complex connections. There are few traps on such problems, and one of them is preloading bolts! This is why I've created a tutorial to do just that in Femap! I hope you will like it! There are several ways in which [...]
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 [...]
What I really like about Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is, that it's full of small things that make you say "ah, so this is what it does!". Degrees of Freedom is just like that. It's critical to understand the very basics, but there are a few fun nuances here and there as well. Let's take [...]
I started paying attention to meshing way too late I think. When I started my Ph.D. I literally divided elements into two categories: those that throw errors and those that don't! But even then I was lucky - I could simply check scientific papers on similar topics and use the elements that someone else used before. [...]
Somehow I never used triangular elements. Not that I knew why TRI are "bad". I think I just didn't like how they look (!). This saved me quite some trouble, proving that sometimes having luck (let's call this a gut feeling shall we?) really helps! But you don't have to rely on a gut feeling - [...]
Nodes and Elements are the very backbones of Finite Element Analysis. You will use them in every analysis you will perform in FEA, so learning about them seems like a good idea! So, what are Nodes and Elements in Finite Element Analysis? In FEA, you divide your model into small pieces. Those are called Finite Elements [...]
It's time for the second part of the #FEAchecklist! Last time we were checking stuff before starting an analysis. Now, let's wonder what to check if you see analysis errors when your analysis fails to run. I can honestly say I'm kind of an expert here... I'm pretty certain I've made most of the possible [...]
My friend and employee Asia just started a maternity leave. Since she was also responsible for training our new team member, in her "casual-self" brilliance she left her an "FEA with no stress" checklist. I've read it, and it's so awesome that I simply have to share it with you! It also gives me a [...]
Arjen asked me recently about stress singularity. There are quite a few articles about this issue already (it is a common problem I think). But I want to bring something to the discussion as well : ) Stress singularity basics I'm sure you have heard about it, so I will be brief. Stress singularity is [...]
Recently I've checked what topics are the most popular on my blog and it seems meshing is in high demand ( : I also figured I will try something different as a style of writing. This post will be a list of few short ideas instead of a long article about something. Let me know [...]
When I first started working with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) I had a huge problem in understanding what to do. I had a basic engineering knowledge but I simply did not understand what was the order of the steps. Suddenly the software had many "modules" and each was screaming at me that some data is [...]
Mesh size is one of the most common problems in FEA. There is a fine line here: bigger elements give bad results, but smaller elements make computing so long you don’t get the results at all. You never really know where exactly is your mesh size on this scale. Learn how to choose the correct [...]