Finite element analysis is a versatile and powerful tool that finds extensive applications across a broad spectrum of industries due to its versatility and ability to analyze diverse engineering challenges. Some key industries and their applications of FEA are listed below, along with the ideal software product to perform these simulations:

1. Aerospace and Defence:

Aircraft Structural Analysis: Assessing the structural integrity of aircraft components like wings, fuselage, and landing gear under different loading conditions, both in normal operation and emergency / crash events. (MSC Apex / MSC Nastran / Dytran)

Thermal Analysis: Evaluating heat distribution and thermal stress in components such as jet engines, electronics and satellites. (Sinda / Cradle CFD / Marc)

Dynamic System Analysis: Understanding and optimizing the system level performance of complex systems, including multiple moving parts, control systems, hydraulics and mechanical drivetrain. (Adams / Easy5 / Elements)

Aircraft Aerodynamic Analysis: Investigating the detailed flow phenomena around the aircraft to understand complex performance parameters due to drag, vortex shedding, shock waves and aerodynamic flutter. (Cradle CFD / MSC Nastran)

2. Automotive:

Crash Simulation: Predicting and analysing the impact and behaviour of vehicles during collisions to understand occupant injury and enhance vehicle safety. (Dytran / Adams)

Fatigue Analysis: Estimating the lifespan and durability of vehicle components subjected to various cyclic loading conditions. (MSC Nastran / MSC Fatigue)

Noise & Vibration: Understanding the dynamics of vehicle structures such as natural frequencies, and the acoustic performance due to road vibrations, engine and wind noise. (Actran / MSC Nastran)

Manufacturing: Simulate detailed manufacturing processes such as welding, forging, sheet metal forming and plastic injection molding. (Simufact / Moldex3D)

3. Civil Engineering:

Structural Analysis: Assessing the strength, stability, and deformation of bridges, buildings, dams, and other structures to ensure safety and longevity. (CivilFEM / Marc)

Geotechnical Analysis: Studying the behaviour of soil-structure interactions for foundation design and slope stability. (CivilFEM / Marc)

4. Electronics:

Thermal Analysis: Evaluating the thermal performance and heat dissipation in electronic devices to prevent overheating, both through passive and active cooling. (Sinda / scSTREAM / PICLS)

Electromagnetic Field Analysis: Analysing the electromagnetic behaviour of components such as antennas and circuits. (Marc)

5. Medical Devices:

Biomechanical Analysis: Simulating the behaviour of implants, prosthetics, and other medical devices within the human body to optimize design and functionality. (Adams / Marc)

Fluid Dynamics in Medical Devices: Analysing blood flow and fluid behaviour in devices like artificial heart valves. (Cradle CFD)

6. Energy and Power Generation:

FEA is used to analyse components and systems in power plants, such as solar radiation in renewable energy projects and detailed thermal and structural analysis in nuclear reactors. (Marc / Easy5 / Elements / Cradle CFD)

7. Oil and Gas:

FEA is utilised in the analysis of structures and equipment in oil rigs, pipelines, and refineries to ensure safety and efficiency. Both normal operational and extreme event loading such as seismic excitation can be evaluated.  (Marc / Easy5 / Elements / Cradle CFD)

8. Marine and Offshore Engineering:

FEA is employed to analyse and design components of ships, offshore platforms, and underwater structures to withstand harsh marine environments. Unique simulation capabilities allows the investigation of structures and machines interacting with waves and underwater explosions. (MSC Nastran / Easy5 / Elements / Cradle CFD / Dytran)

9. Consumer Goods and Appliances:

FEA helps in the design and analysis of various consumer products such as appliances, furniture, and sporting goods to ensure structural integrity and safety. Product packaging to ensure safe transportation of Appliances can also benefit greatly from CAE. (Marc / Dytran / Adams)

10. Mining and Minerals Processing:

FEA helps in analysing structures and equipment used in mining operations, ensuring safety and efficiency in mining processes. Specialized tools enable the simulation of the most complex systems such draglines, drilling, chutes, conveyors, and even detailed underground blast simulations.  (MSC Nastran / Marc / Cradle CFD)

11. Rail and Road Transportation:

FEA is used to analyse and optimise the overall vehicle dynamics as well as detailed structural components and safety features of trains, trams, and other transportation systems. Detailed physics of wheel-rail and tire-road interaction is considered to obtain accurate component loading and vehicle dynamics performance. (VI-Rail / Adams / MSC Nastran / Marc)

12. Academic and Research:

FEA is extensively used in academic research and laboratories for various studies, experiments, and projects in engineering and related disciplines. (MSC One)

In conclusion, FEA and CFD are versatile and powerful tools that can be applied to various fields and industries to simulate, analyse, and optimise the behaviour of structures, components, and systems under different conditions.

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) offers many advantages that make it a most valuable tool for engineers and designers across various industries. Here are the top ten advantages of using FEA & CFD:

1. Cost-Effective Prototyping:

Simulation allows engineers to virtually prototype and test designs before physical prototypes are built, reducing the need for expensive and time-consuming iterations, as well as reducing the many risks and high costs associated with product failure during testing. In many cases, simulation allows for high levels of performance confidence to be attained, even under conditions which could never be tested before operation (e.g. space flight). For more information on this benefit, see our article on Simulation Based Design.

2. Increased Product Understanding:

FEA provides precise and detailed insights into the behaviour of complex structures, helping engineers make informed decisions and optimize designs for better performance. Understanding why a structure fails or under-performs is crucial to knowing how to change or optimize the design. FEA and CFD help you to see the invisible, from internal stresses to external flow patterns, giving the engineer far greater confidence in his design than physical testing is able to produce.

3. Optimised Material Usage:

By simulating the behaviour of different materials, FEA enables the selection of the most suitable materials for the given application. Historically, engineers were notorious for adding in “Safety Factors” which simply meant than many products were overdesigned, heavy and expensive. New materials such as Composites, manufacturing technologies such as Additive Manufacturing and organic optimization tools such as Generative Design allow for unprecedented levels of material optimisation.

4. Complex Geometry Handling:

Due to the advances in 3D design tools (CAD / CAM) and the increasing demand for improved ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing designs, Engineers are no longer limited to straight lines and right-angles. This focus on styling and artistically attractive structures however challenges all the old-school approaches to design and analysis. FEA can handle the most intricate and complex geometries that may be challenging to analyse using other analytical methods, and can provide the most accurate results required, irrespective of the complexity of the geometry.

5. Material Property Variability:

The risks associated with changing a design to use newer materials is high, but the benefits in both cost and performance are often far higher. FEA allows for the incorporation of complex material properties, including their nonlinear behaviour at various temperature levels, enabling accurate analysis of all modern engineering materials under different loading conditions. This enables the engineer to harness the benefits of new material and manufacturing methods, without the risks historically associated with such innovation.

6. Multi-Physics Simulation:

FEA and CFD can simulate multiple physical phenomena concurrently, such as mechanical, thermal, electrical, and fluidic behaviours, providing a comprehensive understanding of how these interact and influence the system. Coupling 1-dimensional and 3-dimensional solvers, extends simulation to the entire system, including the electronic control of the system, to gain confidence that the whole system will perform to its intended purpose.

7. Visualisation and Interpretation:

One of the key benefits of FEA and CFD is the not only the ability for engineers to understand their designs better, but the ability to present a clear understanding of the product performance to all the stakeholders in the design process. Advanced 3D visualisation tools help engineers to interpret and communicate the results effectively to non-technical people and clients. Color-coded graphical representations, flow animations, cross-section plots and various other immersive tools like Virtual or Augmented Reality (VR / AR) make it easier to understand stress distribution, deformation patterns, and other critical product performance parameters.

8. Environmental Impact Assessment:

Despite the pressure to save costs and innovate with new materials and manufacturing technologies, Engineers are being faced with ever increasingly stringent environmental considerations for their designs. FEA and CFD can assess the environmental impact of a design, such as analysing energy efficiency, emissions, and sustainability factors, aiding in environmentally conscious and sustainable product development.

9. Compliance with Regulations:

Similarly, as the need for continuous innovation increases, so do the regulations for product safety and international compliance standards. FEA and CFD ensures that any new design will comply with industry-specific regulations, standards, and safety requirements by identifying areas of non-compliance upfront, and facilitating necessary modifications before the product is launched resulting in massive cost savings should non-conformance result in a product recall.

10. AI Enabled Research and Development:

The profitability of any product and the ongoing sustainability of any industry requires continuous improvement, and this is impossible without a commitment to Research and Development. FEA and CFD are both crucial tools in any engineering research and development process, aiding in the exploration of innovative designs, materials, and concepts without the need for extensive physical experimentation. With the advent of Machine Learning and AI technologies, predicting the performance of designs far beyond the scope of past historical data is now a reality. Simulation literally enables engineers to see the future, and to chart a course to get there.

While CAE can be reduced to a number of isolated tools which specific engineers or specialists use to find answers to difficult questions, its real value to any engineering company is realized when it becomes a holistic driver for innovation, quality and product reliability across the entire organization. For this to happen, it is important to understand it’s role and value across the various stakeholders in the company.

1. System Engineers

It is the function of System Engineers to understand the overall client or project requirements, and to manage the process of integrating all the various engineering disciplines and teams to ensure that the final product meets the overall project goals. CAE allows system engineers to not only understand the system performance early on in the product lifecycle, but allows for various system level concepts and trade-off studies to be conducted across engineering departments. Simulation at this early stage then drives the detailed requirements for all the sub-systems in the project, which as they develop, can feed back into the overall system level integration assessment of project risks and performance.

2. Concept / Design Engineers

Design engineers are usually tasked with the responsibility of interpreting the system level requirements, and translating them down to the sub-system and component level detail design. Without simulation, engineers often get stuck into detail component design too early, which then leads to poor subsystem performance and often drives the overall direction of the product from the wrong end. CAE / Simulation provides the Design Engineer with the tools to quickly evaluate their proposed concepts early in the design process, and to see the impact on the subsystem level, allowing valuable insights to be gained early on before too much time and effort is spent in detailing components which ultimately do not confirm to the system level requirements.

3. Mechanical Engineers / Analysts

Once the initial system requirements have been translated into working conceptual sub-system and component designs, its time for CAE to really deliver its most valuable impact as engineers and analysts are able to develop high fidelity models to accurately capture, predict and optimize the performance of both the systems and the components. It is here where the most time is usually spent on FEA and CFD, and while the cost of the software is often justified purely on the value gained in this part of the process, the impact of CAE reaches far beyond the insights and optimisations gained at this stage.

4. Manufacturing / Industrial Engineers

A largely untapped area of Simulation value is to be found in analysing and optimising the manufacturing process of a product. This includes both detailed component manufacturing simulations such as injection moulding, forging and welding, but also the optimisation of the larger manufacturing plant and its associated logistics to avoid bottlenecks and to streamline plant efficiency. A company that embraces the benefits of CAE often finds greater return for their investment in this area than all the others combined due to the often-untapped scope for optimization of production processes.

5. Engineering Managers

CAE provides Engineering and Project Management with much insight into the overall expected performance of the product, as well as confidence to know that the engineering design process will deliver a product which meets the client requirements on time. Simulation also removes much of the risk and unexpected time delays due product failure during the manufacturing and testing phases, thus allowing for much tighter management of project timelines and engineering resources.

6. Procurement / Sales Managers

Many companies also use CAE to drive product quotations, by including simulations in the quotation process to obtain accurate sizing and costing of the product based on the clients' requirements. This allows for much quicker turnaround times in generating quotations for complex structural design projects with the confidence to know that the sizing and material costs included in the quotation are based on realistic product performance results.

7. Sales / Account Managers

Using the results of CAE simulations, salespeople and account managers are able to show prospective customers how their product will perform in the given scenarios required by the customer. The visual clarity with which CAE results are able to communicate the technical performance of the product has led many companies to include CAE results in their marketing and sales brochures and product documentation.

As can be seen from the widespread scope of benefits available through the entire product development lifecycle, the value of CAE simulation is far greater than simply providing technical answers to a small group of engineers or specialists but is able to impact the entire business model of an engineering product company.

While there are many CAE simulation tools available on the market today, Simteq Engineering specializes in being your CAE technology partner of choice in South Africa. We are not only the sole supplier of the World’s leading CAE software tools, but we also have a team of the most experienced CAE specialists to train and guide your engineers in the successful implementation of these technologies within your company.

Our training courses range from teaching the fundamentals of CAE technologies, to detailed software training from basic to advanced level. Many of our courses are accredited with the Engineering Counsel of South Africa (ECSA) and qualify for CPD points for both Engineers and Managers.

We also offer tailor made technology transfer training and consulting services where we come alongside you and your engineers to not only solve the most challenging problems using CAE, but we also guide your engineers by transferring our knowledge of simulation tools and technology to your specific industry and application.

With almost 30 years of pioneering CAE simulation in South Africa, and over ?? successful customer implementations, SIMTEQ Engineering remains the leader in Simulation Technology in South-Africa, and we look forward to partnering with you to realize the amazing value of CAE within your engineering development process.