Is FEA Right for Me?

If you are looking at Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for the first time, this page has been designed to quickly familiarize you with the basics of the technology and help you assess the type of software you will need for your structural or mechanical design and development process. You can go as deeply into each of these topics as you wish by following the [more] link in each section, or you can get an overview of all the topics by skimming the information on this page.

Our objective is to cut through the industry jargon, theoretical complexities, and equip you with some fundamentals you will need to evaluate the software choices available in the marketplace and determine a course of action that is suited to your design needs, technical level, budget, and business objectives.

If you are a university or technical school student, we have a special offer for learning Finite Element Analysis and invite you to visit FEA for Students.

FEA’s Role in the Product Design and Development Process

Product design is essentially an iterative process. The designer starts with a concept, analyzes the feasibility, produces a drawing, makes a prototype, tests it, evaluates the results, and then repeats this process until finally arriving at deliverable version that can be manufactured.

In developing the concept and analyzing the part, the designer relies on his collective knowledge, skill and understanding in many engineering areas. These may include material science, statics and stresses, dynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and vibration to name a few. The greater and more complete the understanding, the greater the probability that success is achieved in the initial prototype and test phase.

Today’s competitive environment has placed a premium on the ability to reduce the time, effort, prototypes, physical tests, repetitions, and expense involved in this iterative process. Analyzing and testing products on a computer using FEA has proven to be an excellent tool for shortening the time to market, lowering development costs, and improving product quality. FEA allows the engineer to design with a high degree of insight and to perform as much virtual testing on a computer as possible before committing to a particular design for prototyping. This is the power of incorporating FEA into the design process and a compelling advantage that progressive companies are eager to gain with FEA technology.

There are numerous Case Studies on the website that provide actual examples of how companies in various industries have leveraged FEA for competitive advantage. One recent, very detailed illustration is the experience of the Minardi Formula 1 Team which has been written up in articles in various trade publications. See Media Coverage May, June, and August 2005.

FEA as an engineering analysis tool has undergone development over the last half century. Nastran was initially developed by NASA for the space program in the 1960’s and the term NASTRAN is actually an acronym for NASA Structural Analysis.

Initially, FEA was confined to expensive mainframe computers, highly trained specialists, and critical aerospace projects that could afford the funding. The technology spread from there to large corporations that could make the huge investment in hardware, software and a dedicated FEA staff - the aerospace industry being a prime example. The advent of Personal Computers (PCs) brought tremendous improvements in computing power, significant reductions in computing costs, and the steady development of numerical methods and algorithms in FEA software. The lower investment cost led to increasingly wider and wider use of FEA for all kinds of products. Usage spread from large corporations in aerospace, automobiles, and maritime to various sized progressive companies in medical applications, civil structures, chemical industry, electronics, and consumer goods. Noran Engineering has been at the forefront in this movement and has been instrumental in ushering in the new age of FEA for PCs. In the mid 1980’s, Noran Engineering recognized the long term advantages and impact that the PC hardware revolution could have on the engineering analysis field and embarked on a project to significantly enhance and modernize the original Nastran code and port it to PCs. The first version of NEi Nastran was released in 1990. The new code has a number of key strategic advantages in its architecture and programming language as compared to the legacy code written originally for mainframes. These differences continue to be important to the present day and promise to continue to provide advantages going forward. Among the advantages are ease of modification to add new elements, features and upgrades, a code structure that takes advantage of the changes in hardware paradigms that the PC revolution brought, such as, low cost of memory and continuous improvements in processor speeds. NEi Nastran is an integrated program that is more robust and efficient than software that must rely on amalgamating parts from disparate sources.

A good place to start in defining your FEA software needs is to examine your existing design process. You should be able to define the benefit you are looking to achieve. If a financial justification is part of that benefit, a Return on Investment (ROI) can be calculated that will show you how long will it take for your software investment to pay for itself. You should be asking yourself specific questions to understand the benefits that fit your circumstances.

Ask yourself the following types of questions:

By far, the most common use of FEA is structural analysis using a Linear Statics solution sequence. Determining the loads and stresses that a part is subjected to given certain loads and boundary conditions is a basic FEA skill and will be your likely starting point for learning any FEA software. However, once this is established, there are many other analyses options that may be important in your product development environment. Some examples include: dynamic response, normal modes, buckling, prestress, heat transfer, fluid flow - all with or without nonlinear effects.

The level of sophistication may also need to be raised in each of these areas by considering aspects such as whether the system is nonlinear and whether transient conditions need to be analyzed. In addition, the analysis requires consideration of the type of material being used. Typically, properties for common materials can be found in the materials library in most finite element analysis programs. However, certain classes of materials are nonlinear by nature or linear materials are loaded beyond their elastic range thus requiring material nonlinear modeling capabilities.

From a practical standpoint, a good way to determine your analysis needs is to pick a part on a project you have worked on and use it as a model with software vendors. How did you analyze the part? How did you prototype it? How was it tested? What were the criteria for acceptance? Answers to questions like these will help determine your analysis needs. Following is a list of the most popular types of analyses. You will need to be able to identify which apply to your analysis environment.

NEi Nastran analysis capabilities

You can take advantage of Noran Engineering’s Application Engineering staff to review your application to help you assess which FEA software can be used for your analysis or simulation project. Email info@neisoftware.com or call 1-877-Nastran.

With your justification for FEA established, your CAD and FEA import/export needs defined, the types of analyses for your product identified, and a model you can use for evaluating software, you can begin to look at various FEA software vendors.

Your budget will be very much tied into the search process at this point. FEA buyers are faced with a large array of vendors and a very wide range of prices which at first can be overwhelming. However, software prices do in fact segment the market very distinctly. There is an average price point that must be crossed to get professional grade FEA software. The market is structured in such a way that FEA software selling below this level is likely to be below professional grade in some serious ways for serious industrial users or, the low entry price is a misleading marketing tactic where software modules may need to be added later. What does making the investment in the cost differential between lower and professional grade FEA packages gain the engineering practitioner? The differences can be broken down into several categories:

Nastran Solver
Product Performance and Features
Technical Support
Quality and Acceptance by Industry Practitioners
Long Term Viability of Your Software Investment
Connection with Suppliers, Customers and Design Partners

With a commitment to invest in a professional level FEA package, the vendor software choice now becomes one of determining which of these differentiating factors are important for your technical and business needs. These differences are explained further and will help you get full value for your FEA investment without overpaying.

Nastran Solver. One major differentiating characteristic among professional FEA software packages is the use of Nastran solver engines. You want to know that the solvers being used to simulate your product give accurate results in all cases, give fast results there by increasing productivity, and are trusted throughout industry. The Nastran legacy is a touchstone for this assurance. Nastran is an acronym for NASA Structural Analysis software. The specifications for this software were originally developed by NASA for the space program in the 1960’s. Decades of use in the aerospace industry went into proving Nastran’s precision and accuracy, and evolving its power and flexibility. Noran Engineering has further enhanced NEi Nastran making it one of the fastest and most accurate FEA products on the market. From this origin, Nastran spread to several other major industry groups -- automotive, defense, and maritime. Nastran became the accepted standard for FEA in these industries and adopted throughout the world by global corporations. With the advent of PCs, many other types of FEA solvers became available and proliferated in the marketplace. Some solvers were developed around very specialized analysis applications and specific solution types, for example, LS-Dyna for implicit crash analysis. However, in many corporations Nastran is still specified as the only acceptable solver for FEA in product design and development. It is on this basis that the FEA marketplace is divided along Nastran and non-Nastran based codes. In the aerospace, automotive, defense, and maritime industries Nastran is the dominant choice. In the consumer product marketplace there is a lot more variety.

Product Performance and Features. There are an overwhelming number of technical points that New to FEA Users will only be able to fully understand and appreciate after using the technology for some time. Unfortunately, your decision must be made in present time. One simple, direct way to get a feel for the performance aspects of an FEA package, in spite of this major limitation, is to have your design problem run on the FEA software you are considering. In other words, do not settle for a canned demonstration or marketing illustration. In this way, you will know all the modules you will need, what the results will look like, how they compare to an actual result, and have some idea of what kind of experienced man hours it takes to set up the problem.

The NEi Nastran 90-second demo can give you a preview of the process of setting up the model, solving, displaying results and analyzing the graphical and data information in the solution. Please reference Technical Product Performance Issues in FEA Software Selection which discusses in detail the many technical features that differentiate high level professional FEA software packages such as:

NEi Nastran product suite key benefits

Also see Case Studies and Industry Specific Information to see how engineers in your industry have used the product performance advantages and benefits of NEi Nastran.

Technical Support. As a New to FEA User, technical support should be an important factor in your software decision. As you train and move up the learning curve on FEA technology, it will be important that you not only get correct answers and accurate information, but also that it is provided in a timely manner in an understandable way so you can keep your implementation of FEA technology on track, minimize disruptions to projects, keep productivity high, and avoid the frustration that can accompany implementing new technology. One way to assess whether your software vendor has adequate technical support is to try before you buy. You should be able to use the vendor’s technical support call in or email so you will know what it will be like.

These are the types of questions you should be asking. Nothing speaks better about Noran Engineering’s commitment to high quality technical support than the words of our customers. We invite you to review these unsolicited testimonials.

Another important and often underappreciated factor in Technical Support is that the first line of assistance is in the software itself. Look at the Help feature in the software and the documentation. The attention given to this feature is a good indicator of the kind of attention to detail, completeness, and ease-of-use that you will find in the rest of the program. Make sure you look at the warning and error messages in the software you are evaluating.

With NEi Nastran, Help is context sensitive and specific in a Cause, Action, Remarks format that allows you to find and correct problems quickly.

Noran Engineering offers several ways to evaluate our products fromWebEx demonstrations to Evaluation Software. Review all of your choices at Product Demonstration Options or take advantage of the assistance one of our Application Engineers can offer free of charge. Email info@neisoftware.com or call 1-877-Nastran.

Quality and Recognition by Industry Practitioners. You want to know that the FEA software you will be using is accurate, robust, reliable, tested, and proven. You want to know that it has wide acceptance within your industry segment. You should look at the validation testing scheme that your software vendor uses before release.

NEi Nastran releases are tested on over 5,000 reversion test models and 300 standard benchmark test cases from NAFEMS, Societe Francaise des Mechaniciens, Roark’s Formulas for Stress and Strain, and other established theoretical solutions. In addition, solutions are routinely compared to other Nastran and several major FEA solvers. Besides accuracy, solution speed is tested on models ranging in size from a few hundred to tens of millions of degrees of freedom using all element type and solution sequences. The solvers used in NEi Nastran are some of the fastest and most capable in the industry.

Long Term Viability of Your Software Investment. Buying an FEA package is an investment and like any investment it should provide returns over time. Some things to consider are:

These are the types of questions that address how your software investment will fare over time.

One approach in the FEA software industry is to offer New to FEA users inexpensive, basic packages and when users outgrow these simple packages, convert them to the next higher level of analysis software. While very attractive from an initial price standpoint, there are two problems that develop with this practice. One is that the two packages are based on two very different systems. So rather than a smooth transition, there is a major relearning and software familiarization process that must take place. Even more detrimental, the two packages are not compatible and legacy data and results become unavailable. Also, vendors may not credit the previous software purchase requiring an entirely new and much more costly purchase to obtain features not included in the lower priced packages. The other approach is to break the software down into numerous small modules. Again, while the initial price is definitely attractive and meets immediate budget needs, the longer term disadvantage is that the total cost turns out to be substantially higher, all the modules don’t necessarily integrate well and work smoothly, and the software may be incapable of solving the higher level, more sophisticated analysis problems.

NEi Nastran’s approach is to offer a limited number of very comprehensive modules. In this way, the software is integrated well, learning is always a smooth continuous process, and cost is still contained by dividing the packages along major analysis lines where it makes sense from a functional standpoint rather than from a marketing consideration. The many user friendly and ease-of-use features in the Femap Modeler and Solvers allow you to progress smoothly and at your own pace up the learning curve. Your initial investment is never lost.

The other aspect of FEA software’s long term viability to consider is what happens after you buy. As you develop FEA capabilities within your organization, you will want a partnership with your software provider. You will want to get personal attention and make sure your needs are addressed in future software development and upgrades, technical support policies and training topics. You don’t want to get lost amid larger corporate giants who may have a lock on the best services and control the development agenda. Or, find that marketing and advertising takes precedence over technical development. Questions you will want to ask are:

You want a company with a good reputation for product development and service. Perhaps the best recommendations we can offer are the testimonials of those who know us best -- our customers. We invite you to see what their impressions are and encourage you to ask a sales representative for a reference to contact who matches your business type.

Connection with Suppliers, Customers, and Product Development Partners. As your involvement in FEA grows, you will find that there will be many occasions where you will want and need to share FEA data with other business entities involved in the product development process. In some cases, business prospects to which you want to sell products or services may require a certain type of FEA software. Rapid prototyping specialists can often save time and cost by reading files directly into their equipment. Compatibility with major material or component suppliers can smooth development cycles and collaboration efforts. It’s important to be aware that good connection capabilities are an aspect of FEA software that can have important business consequences.

Nastran’s wide industry acceptance, standard data formats, and excellent file transfer capabilities insures that these transactions can takes place, and with a minimum of time, effort, and extra investment. You will find that Nastran is widely used as the primary FEA software, and its ability to translate complex models to all other major analysis software packages insures that you are always connected to the wider FEA community.