Integration Between FEA and CAD/CAM

    For a long time, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has been completely separated from the CAD process (Computer-Aided Design). FEA data input was long and tiresome. As FEA also requires important and expensive data-processing capabilities, its practical use was limited. Since then, computer capabilities have been significantly increased at lower costs, which makes that using FEA throughout the design process is becoming more and more accessible. A growing number of FEA users induces the need for an improvement of the whole process, particularly with respect to FEA data input (mesh generation, loads and boundary conditions, etc.).

    From this point, the idea of integrating CAD and FEA tools for a more efficient and fast FEA data input comes out as a natural solution. Thus, for the last ten years, several solutions appeared, aimed at the integration between CAD and FEA. However, as FEA is used in many different contexts and for many different analysis objectives, as designing new products and systems is a process that involves many modifications, this integration is still difficult and, in many cases, the time required to prepare a FEA model from CAD data is still very significant in the overall analysis process.     

    Research carried out by our team has been focused on this type of problems for several years and many interesting solutions and concepts have been proposed and developed. A short insight of research projects led by our team for the last several years can be found just below: