AEPC401- FINITE
ELEMENT METHODS
PREPARED BY
Mr. BASITHRAHMAN. A
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, ADCET, ASHTA.
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF FEA
HISTORY OF FEA
Increase in the Number of FEA Papers from 1956 to the Present
FEA TIMELINE
● Early 1940s Alexander Hrennikoff and Richard Courant establish the
mathematical foundations of the present form of FEA for solving elasticity
and structural analysis problems in civil and aeronautical engineering.
● 1956 “Stiffness and Deflection Analysis of Complex Structures,” one of the
first articles concerning the application of FEA, is published by M. J. Turner,
R. W. Clough, H. C. Martin, and L. J. Topp in the Journal of the Aeronautical
Sciences.
● 1960 Ray Clough coins the term “finite element method” in his paper, “The
Finite Element Method in Plane Stress Analysis,” presented at the 2nd
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Conference on Electronic
Computation, Pittsburgh, September 1960.
● Late 1960s Mechanical industries recognize FEA as a useful tool for solving
real-life problems. Many of the FEA software still popular today are launched
on the market.
● 1965 NASA issues a request for a proposal for the development of a
structural analysis software tool. The result is the NAsa STRuctural ANalysis
application (NASTRAN), which implements available FEA technology to
solve structural problems.
● 1967 The Finite Element Method, the first book on the topic, is published by
Olgierd Zienkiewicz, Richard Taylor, and Jianzhong Zhu. It remains, to this
day, the standard reference text on the theoretical basis of the method.
● 1968 Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) releases an FEA program called
NASTRAN to NASA.
● 1969 MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC, now MSC Software) initiates
the first commercially available version of NASTRAN, dubbing it MSC/
NASTRAN (now MSC NASTRAN), which would become known as the first
generation of FEA software.
● 1970 John Swanson releases the first version of his ANalysis SYStems
(ANSYS) FEA software.
● 1972 “Lectures on Mathematical Foundations of the Finite Element Method,”
the first mathematical proofs on the properties of the finite element method,
are published by Ivo Babuska and A. Aziz. Until then, the method had been
implemented but not mathematically proven.
● 1978 Hibbitt, Karlsson, and Sorensen release the first version of the FEA
software ABAQUS. 1980s Graphical and computational developments
accelerate quickly.
● 1990s Low-cost, powerful personal computer (PC) workstations emerge,
and FEA is adopted by small- and medium-sized industries.
● 1991 Implementation of model steps in FEA software is successfully
completed, this process essential to verification, validation, and uncertainty
quantification.
● 2006 The Guide for Verification and Validation in Computational Solid
Mechanics is released by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME). This ground-breaking guide lays the foundation of requirements for
controlling errors in numerical simulations.
● 2008 NASA releases a standard for the development of models and
simulations. Any FEA simulation must pass strict verification requirements
to be deemed compliant.
PRESENT
FUTURE
● Research related solution techniques & post
processing tools is more or less saturated and in
future focus will be mainly towards reducing time,
improving quality & flow pattern of mesh generated by
auto meshing.
● Also can expect very powerful & user friendly
commands for brick meshing (auto brick meshing)
● At the moment indian companies are competent with
structural analysis. In near future demand will be high Brick mesh
end analysis lie NVH, CFD, FATIGUE & CRASH.
● For reducing meshing time apart from conventional types of elements,
research is also going on about polyhedral meshing and meshless
(meshfree) analysis.
Polyhedral mesh
● 3D polyhedral elements are more efficient due to more faces shared by
neighbouring elements.
● Tetra has 4 faces, brick has 6 faces, polyhedral has 10 and more faces.
● Advantages of polyhedral meshing could be described as less meshing time
with higher accuracy.
● Some of the CFD softwares have already started providing polyhedral
meshing option.
● Mesh free analysis is an attempt to integrate CAD and solution steps directly
. i.e without conventional & time consuming linking step “ meshing”.
● After 10 to 15 years, conventional meshing would be either very fast and
easy or otherwise there will be no need of meshing at all.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONs OF FEA
1. New Design
2. Optimization or Cost Cutting Process
3. Failure Analysis
