FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is a powerful tool. The software itself has come on leaps and bounds, but the adage of “rubbish in; rubbish out” still holds true. Having the software is one thing, but having an Engineer that can use the software and then interpret the results in such a way to give you a clear, concise and meaningful conclusion, is another.
Widely recognised as being subject matter experts in Finite Element Analysis, we have provided advanced finite element analysis support on some of the most technically challenging projects to some of the most notable national and international entities.
While we have access to a raft of software licences, we are software agnostic. What’s more important is that “we define the right work to do, then we do the work right”.
Yes, we can model the most complex highly non-linear, short duration event in the world, but is that what you need at this stage? A simpler approach may well suffice.
Yes, we can do a simple static linear-elastic assessment, but will that replicate what you’ll actually see in practice? Perhaps not.
Whether it’s linear, non-linear, dynamic, or a combination of all three, that’s fine. We’re not phased. When it comes to FEA, we can do it. We are the experts. Ask around.
Our FEA expertise combined with our industry renowned process will mitigate your risk, improve the performance of your product, shorten your lead times and reduce your costs:
We will mitigate your risk:
- We will identify ‘what’ will work and ‘what’ won’t.
- We will provide an understanding as to ‘why’ something will work and ‘why’ something will not.
- When we know the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, we can then move into the ‘how’.
We will improve the performance of your product:
The initial analysis will give us a baseline assessment; it’ll typically tell us one of three things:
- It’s what we need, i.e., proceed with confidence.
- It’s more than what we need, i.e., it’s over-engineered.
- It’s broken, or less than optimal, i.e., it must be fixed.
Wherever we find ourselves after the initial assessment, further analysis will show ‘how’ we either:
- Further improve the performance of something that already works.
- Improve the performance of something that is either over-engineered or is simply broken.
In some cases, you’re looking for perfection. In others, you’re just looking to be safe and code compliant.
We will shorten your lead times:
We can do the FEA assessments in a matter of hours, days or weeks, whereas the physical build and testing of the actual parts would take months or even years. This is where the Pareto principle, or the ‘80:20’ rule, holds true. When we invest the time at the outset of a project to identify the 20% of the individual component-parts that contribute to 80% of the whole system gain, in most cases, we will be able to set up a ‘parameterised model’. This parameterised model will enable us to analyse the effect of a large number of small changes within ‘an order of magnitude’ reduction in time.
- When a component fails, we can fix it.
- When a component passes, we can improve it.
We will reduce your costs:
Why would you build and physically test something if you already knew that it wouldn’t work? FEA gives you the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ knowledge to let you make the informed decision as to what will work and what will not.
- We’ll eliminate ‘non-starters’ from the start.
- We’ll optimise your product thereafter.
Once we’re done, you simply need to build and test the product that you know will work.