What is FEA?

A hypothetical conversation with a family member unfamiliar with FEA

Your blog is... interesting?  I have no idea what you're talking about!  Why'd you make it?

A few reasons:
-I have former co-workers who still use many of the same tools that I still use, and I wanted a place where I could document some of the FEA knowledge that I've picked up in the years since we worked together
-I also wanted a place to have more informal discussions of competing commercial software packages, similar to how many consumer products are reviewed
-Finally, I wanted to play around with some fun stuff

What is FEA?  Am I saying that right, feeya?

FEA (pronounced Eff-ee-A) is a numeric technique used to simulate the structural, thermal, acoustic, and sometimes fluid behavior of a volume of material by dividing it into a series of individual elements defined by the grids that they connect to, which are the locations where the primary field variables (such as displacement or temperature) are calculated.  These field variables can then be used to estimate other variables within the elements, such as stress or heat flux.

Explain all that again, but like I'm five. Not that I don't know what you're talking about!  Ha-ha..

FEA is basically a type of computer program that lets an engineer find out if something is strong enough, stiff enough, or quiet enough.  That something could be anything, like an airplane, car, smart phone, or bell.

What's a computer?

A calculating machine made up of input and output devices which contains both working memory and a processor which operates on it.

I kid, I know what a computer is.

Ok, uhh good.

So who uses this stuff?

Lots of people!  There are dozens and dozens of FEA programs one could buy or use, and nearly any high volume consumer product  has been analyzed in FEA.  In just the last few years its use has exploded from mostly aerospace (Airplanes etc.) to almost everything else, from cars to cell phones to medical implants to diapers.

Angry Birds too right? And like movies?

Not too many games or movies have done structural physics very well.  The big exceptions have been Bridge Builder and World of Goo, both good simulations of a bridge model in FEA.  Angry birds has a collision detection engine, which tracks when things touch each other, but the behavior of a brick or piece of wood once it's been hit is actually very basic; it has a certain amount of bounce reaction and it's either damaged to failure or not.  FEA is more associated with a single piece bending and changing shape; BeamNG is the closest I've seen.

Movies are starting to become a little more sophisticated.  Pixar has been very open about their efforts to add more physics to their animation software, particularly for hair, such as the work they put into making the heroine's hair in Brave more realistic.

That was more than I really cared about there.

Yeah I know.  Fortunately I'm just imagining this conversation!

AWESOME!