Blog Posts

Most mechanical engineers in their studies will learn Mohr’s Circle. It’s an important concept that, unfortunately, isn’t appreciated much outside the university curriculum. But what is it and can we apply it to our understanding of FEA results? Read further to find out! A Quick Background Mohr’s circle is named after its creator, Christian Otto

Many of us have utilized the power of FEA solutions, such as Abaqus, to analyze all manner of products. But how much do we really know about exactly how it works? In this article, we will learn how to discretize a simple 1D domain into linear and quadratic elements and derive shape functions by approximating

We all know that output files generated by most FEA solvers can be huge. In some cases, this can be problematic, especially if you’re working with limited hard drive space. There’s nothing more frustrating than running an analysis for many hours, only to have it stop before it finishes because you ran out of space!

The purpose of this blog post is to provide an introduction to the wide array of materials that we can model using Abaqus (and many other FEA solutions). Since materials behave in wildly different ways in the real world, it’s important that we can capture these in our simulations accurately and efficiently. Introduction To Material

Abaqus allows us to model things using many different types of robust material models, depending upon the physics at hand. In this post, we’re going to be focusing on hyperelasticity, which is typically reserved for rubbery polymers as well as biomaterials and solid propellants. The objective is to provide an overview of hyperelastic materials and

When we’re performing finite element analysis, we’re always looking for ways to idealize and simplify loading. This both increases the confidence in our results and reduces the overall computational expense required to solve the problem. A great example of this is the ability to estimate the pressure at the bottom of a liquid filled tank,

There are so many engineering problems where capturing the micromechanics of individual particles plays a crucial role in determining the overall system behavior. Some examples include sand piling, powder metallurgy, mineral processing, particle packing etc. These problems are numerically modelled using Discrete Element Method (DEM). DEM is a finite difference method used for predicting the

Cars and planes, air conditioners, and batteries, among others, all rely on fluids to function at their best. However, fluid problems are quite difficult to solve by hand. So how do engineers make design decisions based on fluid problems? Do they have to rely on physical testing only? Of course not! They use CFD, or

The Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) technique in Abaqus is a powerful tool to analyze the interaction between structures and fluids simultaneously without the need to use different software. In this article, we will talk about the importance and applications of CEL. But first, it’s important that we get a basic understanding of the differences between Lagrangian

We all know that Abaqus is an extremely powerful FEA solver that allows us to simulate all kinds of real-world physics… but what happens when a material model or other type of physical behavior is unavailable in the tool? It might be tempting just to give up and go a different route – but not