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Extended finite element method (XFEM) was developed by the late, great Dr. Ted Belytschko et al. at the end of the 90’s (see Wikipedia for more details).  Since he worked closely with the developers of LS-DYNA on many other topics, it is natural to see his work implemented within ‘DYNA.  I first met him in the early 90’s when I took his and Prof. Hughes week-long Nonlinear FEA Methods in Palo Alto, CA.   As for myself, I sat in the back with a post-doctoral student from Budiansky’s group out of Harvard so he could explain to me what was going on since I was pretty much dazed and confused during the whole week.

Out of Concern for the health of our attendees and Staff we regret to inform that the LS-DYNA Explicit, Nonlinear, Large Deformation Analysis for Structural Mechanics May 11-15, 2020 Course has been Canceled due to Coronavirus (COVID-19).

All gatherings and events must be canceled due to COVID-19 spread, we recommend isolation to flatten the curve of transmission and you take all necessary precautions to maintain yourself healthy.

We encourage early registration for Our next Course:

LS-DYNA® Training Implicit and Explicit Nonlinear Transient Analysis for Structural Mechanics on Oct 5 - 9, 2020

For those who cannot travel for our hands-on LS-DYNA training,  we have the option of our ONLINE LS-DYNA TRAINING COURSE.

One engineer’s observation about the world of simulation engineering beyond the folk tales of “oh its really easy”

The FEA Quiz Revisited

The basic challenge that every simulation engineer faces is how do we tell the difference between a cartoon and that of a simulation. As a friend of mine has remarked, I can make you a cartoon very inexpensively but an accurate simulation will cost you. It is a tough game since engineering is a blend of getting the job done on schedule and on budget and how does one decide that a simulation is good enough? I have no answer since it is the responsibility and the reputation of the simulation engineer to decide whether or not that the answer is good enough and it is a weighty responsibility. Combine this responsibility with the at times tiresome nature of model construction and checkout, and the pool of engineers willing to become simulation engineers is not exactly large. Which leads to another comment by a friend: “Many engineers think they might want to be simulation engineers.” But of course, once they start slogging thru the modeling process and get their asses kicked via bad simulations, they realize that maybe it ain’t the dream job that they had envisioned!