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.