It's amazing to me how many people working in artificially simplified fields look at real world mechanics and think it must be simple. Only the models are simpl

It's amazing to me how many people working in artificially simplified fields look at real world mechanics and think it must be simple. Only the models are simple, and they are still impossible to solve analytically, with tensor projection mechanics as freshman methods. FEM is used on anything beyond a toy model and everyone building things knows that the ability to obtain and assemble materials is a far bigger constraint than measuring any ideal material property. Carbon fiber composites and single crystal nickel rotor blades are actually convenient simplifications. Properly designed they allow for more ideal structures and lower the dimensionality. To give an example. TI built a multi $B business on DMD micromirror based projection systems. The millions of mirror hinges which oscillate at several kHz in each projector are built from thin film Aluminum under several % strain. They were most of a decade in and most of $B of investment before it was shown that the hinges happened to be thin enough to be single crystal in the high strain region allowing them to operate. Aluminum fatigue models weren't something the EEs were worried about, and they happened to be right! Complexity is built on abstraction. Some things are VERY difficult to abstract. Solving coupled electro-thermo-mechanical equations for heterogeneous 3D objects is one of them.