To be honest I avoided this topic for quite some time. Every now and then someone asks me about it, so clearly I should write a post. But the fact that I do my own online FEA course means that this may be received as an advertisement rather than advice. To "deal with it" I [...]
I well remember when I started learning FEA. It was the beginning of my Ph.D. and no one told me that shell stability is highly nonlinear and that FEA will be difficult to do. I just assumed I was too stupid to understand this, and I was regularly hitting a wall with my head. Now, [...]
A few days ago Josh sent me an email with a question about choosing FEA software. And I realized I've never actually written about it. Time to fix it I guess : ) But since I'm experimenting with videos (let me know what you think!) I've made this one about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq0YFTQuVL8 There are different [...]
I got a really interesting question on my email from Fateme. I wanted to address this issue so many times now, so finally there is a great occasion to do this! In Abaqus, can we review the capability of a structural member? Whether or not it can bear the load like: shear, bending, twisting, axial [...]
I got a question from Manoj about the basics of rigidity. Since the post about structural rigidity (gummy bears!) is so popular I figured it would be nice to share another story about rigidity I often use... cavemen! The question may seem simple, but I'm sure there will be plenty cool ideas in this post [...]
Recently I got a great question from Ardalan (thanks for writing mate!) about defining nonlinear supports in FEA. I think he does a better job of defining the problem: First how to constraint an entity with in tolerance rather than completely fixing it? i.e. how to define a certain range of motion for an entity [...]
Since I announced Q&A column on my blog I got several great questions so far. I will try to answer as many of them as possible at the end of each month. If you have sent me a question and you didn't find an answer here no worries! I store all of them and I [...]