Blog Posts

Plane stress and plane strain assumptions are something that we hear all the time in FEA, and in solid mechanics in general, but what actually are they? It is often assumed that everyone in the field of engineering implicitly understands what these terms mean, hence straightforward explanations can be somewhat hard to find. Here, we

Whether you’re venturing into FEA for the first time or you’re a seasoned analyst, it is important to have a good picture in your mind – and maybe even a written plan – for your model before you ever even open the pre-processing software. If you try to skip this step, you’ll likely be heading

We regularly need to model contact between parts within FEA models. After all, not many of our simulations will include only one component, and as we begin to increase the complexity of our jobs, we tend to prefer contact over traditional ties and glue. On occasion, it is simply not possible to obtain static equilibrium

When running a finite element analysis, one of the first decisions we must make is whether we think it should be considered a static or dynamic problem. But what exactly constitutes a static and a dynamic problem? And which analysis type is most suitable for each? In this post, we aim to break down these

Many of us are familiar with the terms first- and second-order as it relates to finite elements, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we all know how and when to use them. Today, we will be discussing a few key points regarding element order and making a case for why it matters to us as CAE

FEA models come in all shapes and sizes. While sometimes we’re trying to find the stresses in a stiff, steel structure, others we might be looking at the behavior of a thin membrane or the buckling of a slender column. You may have heard the term ‘nonlinear geometry’ before, but perhaps are not really sure

As we have discussed in some of our previous blogs about Element Selection in Abaqus, choosing the appropriate finite element type is critical for obtaining accurate and reliable predictions. However, with the vast array of available element formulations in Abaqus, this can sometimes be challenging, particularly for new users of the software. Because many novice

Have you ever performed an analysis on a seemingly robust structure only to discover stresses that exceed the allowable limit by orders of magnitude? As experienced analysts, this is likely a problem you rarely encounter; however, when first delving into CAE, many engineers run into confusion when interchanging between unit systems. So, why does this

When performing Finite Element Analysis (FEA), there are many factors that can influence the accuracy of the simulation, the most critical of which may include mesh size and element quality. Mesh size, as you might guess, refers to the geometric dimensions of the element: length, width, and height. Element quality, though, is a bit more

Sunday is Valentines Day, and whether you have that special someone in your life or not, Fidelis is spreading the love with this ductile damage tutorial for Abaqus! The Fidelis Fun Features series is aimed at taking a lighthearted approach to learning some of the more advanced features of ABAQUS in a fun and efficient