Structural Engineering or FEA Freeware ?

I can only second Ad Hoc and others. It is worth remembering that FEA is a mode of calculation and modelling, that is also based on destructive testing of real structures to verify the data. Sort of reverse engineering to some extent, proving the mathematics of the modelling.
I have seen car and vehicle prototypes made with composite prototype press tools and then crashed to EU standards of test procedures. After crashing the vehicles are measured accurately on a ground flat table, to confirm where deformation has taken place, whether there are other areas which need attention ie welded joints, adhesive bonds etc etc.

The basic beam structures are still a very useful guide to correctly engineering things. Some years back I designed a steel shelf to support a fairly heavy object at around head height on a moving trolley. The client had specified the maximum bend they wanted and put the design out to specialist FEA engineers who changed it. The 'new' unit flexed 10X the requested max deflection, and my original design ended up being made! So also beware of decimal point errors!.

 

Thanks SukiSolo,

I understand: when you are not familiar with something a decimal error isn't easy to detect for the rookies, while more obvious for professionnals.

I have the 10 chapters to chew and then I ll try to do something with an Excel spreadsheet

Thank again

EK

 

When I was looking for free engineering software I stumbled across CAELinux.

http://www.caelinux.com/CMS/

It is a Linux distribution that comes with a lot of open source engineering software. I installed the distribution in VirtualBox which worked fine. I haven't really played around with it though. It should also be possible to 'burn' the iso file to a USB stick and boot your windows computer into CAELinux that way.