good evening,

i recently finished my masters in mechanical and pipeline engineering (very little fea included) and will shortly be starting a job where i have been told one of my first tasks will be working alongside several stress engineers and getting to grips with caesar. i have been sent a couple of example reports the company has issued and have requested any caesar manuals there is. i was wondering if anyone could recommend any technical papers or books that are worthwhile reading? there seems to be a lot about. i am particularly interested in the method used in fea, i have read about stiffness matrices etc but having seen some outputs i am interested in how the elements are analysed, in the outputs i have seen the forces seem to alternate between positive and negative across an element, what is the reason for this? i have searched the board and came across a couple of papers on friction that seem very usefull, any others people could recommend for a newbie to fea would be appreciated. i have been told it takes a long time to become a proficient stress engineer but would like to be as prepared as possible, thanks.

The fastest, easiest way to come up to speed on this (at least so you'll know what you don't know) is to attend a seminar. Check with our Dealer in the UK ( Fern Computer Consultancy ) for information on when and where the next session will be held.