What Every Engineer Should Know About: Computational Techniques of Finite Element Analysis

Finite element analysis (FEA) has become the dominant tool of analysis in many industrial fields of engineering, particularly in mechanical and aerospace engineering. This process requires significant computational work divided into several distinct phases. What Every Engineer Should Know About Computational Techniques of Finite Element Analysis offers a concise, self-contained treatment of FEA and all of the tools needed for efficient use and practical implementation.

This book provides you with a walk-through of the process from the physical model to the computed solution. Based on the author's thirty years of practical experience in finite element analysis in the shipbuilding, aerospace, and automobile industries, it describes the transformation of the physical problem into a mathematical model, reduction of the model to a more efficient, numerically solvable form, and the solution of the problem using specific computational techniques. The author discusses time and frequency domain solutions as used in practice, as well as the representation of the computed results.

What Every Engineer Should Know About Computational Techniques of Finite Element Analysis serves as a to-the-point guide to using or implementing FEA for both beginners and everyday users who must apply the finite element method to your daily work. The techniques can be easily executed in most available FEA software packages.

It is an excellent presentation really of what engineers should know about computational techniques in FEA. The descriptions of the various subjects are very clear and transparently expose the facts.

I hope engineers are interested to learn these lectures, which give them the opportunity to take a critical position in their doing.

This is necessary because
- computing uses floating point models while classical theories use inductive and deductive models
- computing is essentially finite while mathematics is the science of infinite
- computing sometimes promotes logical mistakes

Also in view of these more or less philosophical aspects your book will sharpen the thinking about limitations of application of the FE technique.
-Dr. Otto Gartmeier, Manager, NVH Optimization, Daimler Chrysler Corporation

I wish this book had been published earlier! ...If you use NASTRAN on a daily basis as the Number 1 Code, you will find that Dr. Komzsik's book is unique and outstanding, compared to all other Finite Element books. Look at the real life examples. It shows that Dr. Komzsik studied mathematics and then was, for over 20 years, one of the team leaders at MSC developing and maintaining NASTRAN. All of the important features in real life applications are explained in a few sentences and illustrated if necessary...
I highly recommend this excellent book for every engineer. Even for students, it is very affordable and should be used as a standard reference whenever a Finite Element code is applied.
-Dr. Ortwin Ohtmer, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, California State University, Long Beach, USA