Foundations
From time to time it is worth getting back to basics. These are pragmatic examples and techniques across a few basic areas of structural analysis — the kind of thing that is useful to have worked through once by hand before trusting the software to do it.
General topics
- Direct stiffness method — a truss, by hand, then in FEMAP
- Simple bolt pattern — classical method — with calculator
- Simple bolt pattern — FEA — with calculator
- Margin of safety — with calculator
Structural joints
Joint modeling at the fastener level is also a service.
Finite elements
- Nastran SEKRRS fatal — excessive pivot ratios
- RBE2 vs RBE3
- Femap API
- Build a FEMAP model from Excel
More FEMAP automation: Engineering Tools (65 free macros).
* This section is not designed to train you to perform structural analysis, or to make recommendations about how a particular analysis should be performed; each real-life situation is unique.