
The development of FEA for real-life applications started around the mid-1950s, as papers by Turner, Clough, Martin & Topp, Argyris, and Babuska & Aziz show. įEA was independently developed by engineers in different industries to address structural mechanics problems related to aerospace and civil engineering. However, the earliest mathematical papers on Finite Element Analysis can be found in the works of Schellbach and Courant. The results of a simulation based on the FEA method are usually depicted via a color scale that shows, for example, the pressure distribution over the object.ĭepending on one’s perspective, FEA can be said to have its origin in the work of Euler as early as the 16th century. It is used as the basis for modern simulation software and helps engineers find weak spots, areas of tension, etc., in their designs. Simply, FEA is a numerical method used for the prediction of how a part or assembly behaves under given conditions.

It is important to know that FEA only gives an approximate solution to the problem and is a numerical approach to getting the real result of these partial differential equations.


These partial differential equations (PDEs) are complicated equations that need to be solved in order to compute relevant quantities of a structure (like stresses (\(\epsilon\)), strains (\(\epsilon\)), etc.) in order to estimate the structural behavior under a given load. Differential equations not only describe natural phenomena but also physical phenomena encountered in engineering mechanics.
