3 ms·

Are life safety applications allowed to rely on FEA alone?

wtfmcgrill 4y ago
If it's life safety chances are there's an acceptance/certification test that needs to be done to demonstrate safety. I think some applications that are life safety can use FEA for acceptance test but the criteria are strict and the FEA model needs to be well understood. FEA is mostly to aid in the design phase.
youainti 4y ago
Kind of. My father is an engineer who uses FEA extensively in his small niche of pressure tanks. They use FEA to design the tanks and then stress test manufactured versions to ensure the manufacturing process matches what the FEA model predicts.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Absolutely. Models are usually validated against the set number of conditions when possible, but it is impossible to validate all of the outputs across the operating range
nraynaud 4y ago
I Hope not, since bugs have been found in the reference model of some rocket engine 20 years after they had gone gold. In other new comparison operators eat NaN for lunch and carry on with the computation like they had a sensible answer.
mihaaly 4y ago
Never. Complementary regulations (varies by location and industry) define methods and procedures, validations and control, based on statistics where necessary, for assuring an accceptable level of risk of failure (never zero but very very small) in balance of resource use. Errors might be introduced in any stage of realization of an engineering product from concept to delivery (including calculation errors, misuse of methods and tools, etc.) but we could prepare for know - and to some extent unknown - sources of trouble implementing assurances and validations, approvals and checkups, coupled with criminal accountibility. What comes out of a FEA software (which could have bugs, which could have been misused, using wrong data, etc.) will never be realized without scrutiny. Even the scrutiny and validation methods can have errors in it so redundancy is expected but straight delivery of FEA calculations (actually any stage of the process) into production without checks can be considered as criminal neglect (of which is impossible to eliminate like any other crime).

If it's life safety chances are there's an acceptance/certification test that needs to be done to demonstrate safety. I think some applications that are life safety can use FEA for acceptance test but the criteria are strict and the FEA model needs to be well understood. FEA is mostly to aid in the design phase.

youainti 4y ago

Kind of. My father is an engineer who uses FEA extensively in his small niche of pressure tanks. They use FEA to design the tanks and then stress test manufactured versions to ensure the manufacturing process matches what the FEA model predicts.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

Absolutely. Models are usually validated against the set number of conditions when possible, but it is impossible to validate all of the outputs across the operating range

nraynaud 4y ago

I Hope not, since bugs have been found in the reference model of some rocket engine 20 years after they had gone gold. In other new comparison operators eat NaN for lunch and carry on with the computation like they had a sensible answer.

mihaaly 4y ago

Never. Complementary regulations (varies by location and industry) define methods and procedures, validations and control, based on statistics where necessary, for assuring an accceptable level of risk of failure (never zero but very very small) in balance of resource use. Errors might be introduced in any stage of realization of an engineering product from concept to delivery (including calculation errors, misuse of methods and tools, etc.) but we could prepare for know - and to some extent unknown - sources of trouble implementing assurances and validations, approvals and checkups, coupled with criminal accountibility. What comes out of a FEA software (which could have bugs, which could have been misused, using wrong data, etc.) will never be realized without scrutiny. Even the scrutiny and validation methods can have errors in it so redundancy is expected but straight delivery of FEA calculations (actually any stage of the process) into production without checks can be considered as criminal neglect (of which is impossible to eliminate like any other crime).