Habituating FEA

Today when we hear about finite element method (FEM) , the first thing that comes across our mind would be a beautiful picture like this: ...

Shape functions are polynomial functions that interpolate the discrete displacements into continuous functions. They are therefore also know...

During the assembly of the global stiffness matrix (K) , local stiffnesses are numerically integrated in the parent coordinate (the polyno...

Gaussian quadrature is a method that replaces an integral by a sum. As an example, consider the following 1D integral: Gaussian quadratu...

Figure 1 is a flowchart illustrating the sequence for computing the stiffness matrix of a simple problem (the concept is similar to more com...

Direct vs. Iterative methods The two approaches available for solving global stiffness matrix (K) in FEM are: Implications on FEA...

Meshing involves: discretisation of a continuum into finite number of elements defining element type (determined by shape functions ) ...

Weak formulations (a.k.a.  variational formulations ) of partial differential equations (PDEs)  are hugely important in the  FEM  as they en...

This post aims to address the question that arises when one cannot distinguish between boundary conditions (BCs) and displacement BCs in the...

Figure 1 is a flowchart illustrating the FEM process for a linear static problem (the concept is similar to more complex problems): Figur...

In mathematics , partial differential equations (PDEs) can be solved either analytically (exact, continuous) or numerically (approximation,...