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Drej, isn't that how analysis? People treat most systems like they are linear, because... well... that's what they can analyze! I guess everything is linear given a small enough range and everything is non-linear given a large enough range. The most important part of an analysis is...

My background is in linear structural analysis. I do have access to NEiNastran non-linear, and someone just asked me to look at a deep drawing operation and figure out why some cookware is coming out of the die warped. My instinct is that deep drawing of sheet metal requires a specialized...

What you specialize in at the MS level won't define or limit your career. The main advantage of a master's is the work you do on a thesis, which is a major project to conceive, execute, and document. The additional courses are handy, as well as the mindset you learn from solving open ended...

Here's the perspective of a 31 year old ME. When I finished grad school, I went to a GM interview where they were processing applicants by the busload. They offered an offensively low salary, such that I didn't even bother to counter offer. I felt like they had wasted my time, and only wanted...

Good question. I had always assumed "p" referred to changing the polynomial order of the element, while "h" referred to changing the dimension of the element, where "h" is a generic length, or height, dimension.

mrmartins, I recently concluded an evaluation process for FEA and CFD software. The packages I evaluated for FEA included NEiNastran, Ansys/CFX, MSC/Nastran, Algor, Cosmosworks, Abaqus, Strand7, and Adina. Noran proposed MAYA's TMG Flow to go with NEiNastran, since both packages use FEMAP as a...

cnuk, I think Mentat still exists as a legacy product for people who are used to it. I haven't used Mentat, Marc, or Patran since I was in grad school 7 years ago, but I doubt MSC has spent any money on Mentat since aquiring it. Patran was a very capable mesher and had lots of options, and I...

cloche, Thanks for the advice. We run Pro/E, although I'm a big fan of SolidWorks. The big selling point the Cosmos salesmen were pushing was the integration with SolidWorks, which isn't an advantage to us. Secondly, the current versions of CosmosWorks don't allow integration of shell and...

What are the general differences between plates and shell elements? What is a good general handbook for FEA? I'd like something with an explanation of the different element formulations, solver theories, and potential pitfalls.

If that one doesn't do everything you like, you may want to check out Strand7. I think they quoted me $4600. It seemed to me like it could be a pretty good package for modeling beam structures.

Your company may have the Mentat interface for Marc (which is dated and cryptic). You could propose purchasing a new pre/post-processor like Patran, which would be cheaper than getting a new FEA package, but would still be thousands of dollars.

A few thoughts on some previous posts: 1) Pencils and paper can be abused. 2) There are engineers with many years of bad experience. I once presented a new joint design and compared the free-body diagrams for the new and old designs. A 30-year veteran gave it a thumbs down because he said...

In FEMAP (for MSC/Nastran solver) I often meshed a surface instead of a midplane. And then in the element definition, I would offset the nodes and stress recovery points by t/2. This had the advantage of making connectivity easier, and avoided the generation of messy midplanes. I'm not sure...

I am evaluating multiple FEA packages for my company. I have 6 years experience running MSC/Nastran, and a little experience with SDRC and CosmosWorks. I have narrowed the list to ANSYS, ABAQUS, and NEiNastran. The issue is that we make vacuum motors, so in addition to looking at shaft and...