Practical Finite Element Analysis
for Mechanical Engineers

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Practical Finite Element Analysis for Mechanical Engineers by Dominique Madier. The book contains over 600 pages of beautifully laid out text and illustrations which guide the engineer through a very broad range of FEA topics. It really is a pleasure just to dip anywhere into this book, with it's clean and attractive layout. 

 

The reader is guided through basic principles of FEA technology including element types, and the background to shape functions and element stiffness matrices. Loads, Boundary Conditions , Meshing and Post processing follow in a logical fashion. All of these topics include a wealth of practical hints and tips, which will be useful to both the experienced and the newcomer. Additional sections cover 'special' elements including rigids and flexible connections and springs and methods. The important contact types are explained, together with sub modelling methods.

 

A summary of Linear Static Analysis is given, and then extended to Nonlinear Static Analysis. Linear and Nonlinear Buckling are described, together with an introduction to Normal Modes Analysis. The sections on estimating and tuning hardware performance, validation/correlation, and analysis reporting are practical and very helpful. The final section is a roundup of good modeling practices, filled with examples.

 

I have no hesitation in strongly recommending this book to anyone, from beginner to expert, who is interested in FEA. I will certainly be encouraging students on my FETraining e-learning and live courses to obtain a copy. I thank Dominique for his effort and dedication in producing such a useful contribution for the FEA community.

A monumental achievement, this textbook is poised to become a reference for anyone in the field of Finite Element Analysis. The book is thorough covering both the mathematics behind the physics problem, as well as the practical consideration relative to solving real life engineering problems. A must-read for Mechanical Engineering students and practitioners alike!

Students around the world can now take a deep breath of solace and calm knowing that there is a new textbook that gives them exactly what they want – the best practical methods and guidelines for the development and validation of finite element models, the history on how they were developed, and the theory behind why they’re the best. And to top it all off, it was written by an Aerospace Subject Matter Expert (SME) that has seen these topics applied to real Aerospace hardware. Thank you, Dominique.

What I have found unique to this book, is it focus on, solid modelling techniques as opposed to the "simple command teaching" of most books, and its focus on the theory of FEM. I highly recommend this book to anyone involved with FEA.

If you’re an aerospace engineer (or from any other industry, for that matter) working in FEA then you MUST read this book. Over 600 beautifully-crafted pages, jammed with a huge amount of information on all sorts of FEA-related topics, from the basics, through model build, analysis and verification, plus loads more. This is definitely the most impressive FEA book I have ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot). Whether you’re a newbie getting to grips with the techniques or a time-served analyst, looking for the specifics on a wide range of topics, you should be looking at this. I’ve never seen such a great balance between theory and practice before. Well done to the author - there’s some real hard work in this, and it really shows!

It is an excellent book, by far one of the best on this topic. Very well structured, with a clear and detailed text, impressive illustrations and excellent examples. Great job.

I want to recommend this book to anyone who uses finite element analysis (beginners or advanced) because you will find many useful answers and practical examples that I did not found, until now, in other similar books. It is very well structured both theory and examples.

This is like the FEM bible that all FEA analysts need. Good job in putting all that practical knowledge together. I can’t wait to increase my FEM knowledge and skills with this.

The book is very easy to read and detailed. I have never seen a book with similar content. Really, It is worth reading it. It takes a lot of time and effort to write a book that clearly explains it. I'm used to taking notes of the daily problems I face in my job, so I can appreciate your work. Very good job!

I had the pleasure to meet Dominique on the C-Series/A220 development program in 2010. I discovered a gentleman with profound FEA knowledge and a dedicated professional applying rigorous methodology to his work. I was honored to be asked to participate as a reviewer for his book, which will become a reference in both industry and academia. His book is well structured and provides insight in the FE theory and practical, technical approach to real world problems. I am very enthusiastic for his project and I am sure the reader will keep this book in the short list of references to be kept close at hand.

This first edition has been a wonderful and exciting news within the aerostructures analysis community. I got my copy of the book on October 6th, 2020 and since then I keep finding out that most of the personal notes, tips and tricks I have gathered and learned during my last 20 years of structures analysis are perfectly presented, and much more, in this book. Dominique Madier deserves the merit of proposing to the structures analysis community not only an original, first-time published information but a must-know practical knowledge.

I'm happy and delighted that experts like Dominique are sharing their deep understanding of structures analysis with next generations of engineers. I believe it is important to remember through this book that structures analysis physics and fundamentals are pretty well established, FEM as a numerical modeling approach for complex situations can evolve as long as it is supported with validation and within accepted error limits. It is therefore fundamental to remind in the era of "Apps" and color plots, about engineer's duty to push the limits of judgment rather than relying on FEM as a black box magic tool. This book is about sharing validated methods in an accurate and practical way with the community of engineers and contributing from the technical side to a high standard of safety and pushing the competitive limits in the air vehicle.

When it comes to Finite Element Analysis, we still have a big lack of bibliographies able to bring real aspects of the daily activities of an Engineering department. Dominique’s initiative on his FEA book is amazing, because he is bringing his huge experience in solving engineering problems in the Industry into the book, not just in a theorical aspect, but practical approach in how to use Finite Element Method to deal with structural challenges during product development. The book is filling out the lack we have, dealing with good practices, real examples and the theory of the method. For sure, this book is increasing the opportunity for new FEA users learn the method in the right direction, and to FEA experts improve their approach.

I have spent some time to read the book. The book contains both theoretical and practical aspects of FEA. I think every FEA Engineers need to go through it to refresh him/her self or to learn from the basics.
It includes all necessary information’s you need to know while doing a FEA analysis from building up your model to postprocessing and understanding analysis results. It also includes the verification checks to make sure that your model is correctly builded up. It is highly recommended to all FEA Engineers.

I bought the Practical Finite Element Analysis for Mechanical Engineers book by Dominique Madier. I thoroughly had deep pleasure reading it chapter by chapter. The book is well organized and contains practical FEA methodologies and strategies that any engineer needs to know in his career as FEA engineer. The book summarizes the most important knowledge that highly specialists know in this field. I am deeply delighted and grateful to the Author for sharing his knowledge within our engineering community. For those reasons, I recommend this book to any engineer or specialist in the field of finite element analysis.

As an aerospace engineering student, I am very interested in the domain of mechanical structure. It is why I want to know more and go into the details of FEA. But it's not that easy to find a book that covers theory and practice exhaustively.
When Dominique started talking about his book project, he intrigued me a lot and I started following him. I knew his book would become a reference for all FEA engineers because it is the result of decades of experience.
When I received my copy, I had confirmation. Extremely accurate, with many illustrations, a little bit of theory and a lot of practical examples, It provides what an FEA engineer needs to be able to be autonomous in structural analysis.
If you are an aspiring engineer you can't miss it, I highly recommend it.

I am a Master's Student and my thesis involves building a Finite Element Model of a touch probe. FEA is really a vast topic and understanding key elements of it is very crucial in thoroughly and accurately designing and analyzing any physical problem. Using FEA software without any prior basic understanding of physics, elements used in FEA, Material Models, Contacts, and other key concepts can bring about inaccurate results. This book covers all the practical aspects of FEA along with real-life examples. The flow of this book is really well structured and easy to navigate. Mastering FEA is not an easy task but this book will unquestionably bring you one step closer. Thank you Dominique Madier for this amazing book.

I am grateful to have been chosen as one of the reviewers of the book "Practical Finite Element Analysis for Mechanical Engineers".

Dominique and I have been working together on the C-Series/A220 development program for several years. During this period, it was a pleasure to exchange with him regarding how to better handle finite element models. When I reviewed his book, several years after, I figured out that what Dominique wrote is what he usually do for his finite element tasks.

Dominique's book presents the best practices as well as the methodologies and the strategies for FEA engineers, to help them to do finite element analysis for any type of structure.

I strongly recommend this book without any hesitation for any engineers or specialists in the field who are interested to use finite element analysis in the frame of their work or their teaching.

I bought the e-book recently and I am finding it really useful for my day to day FEA activities at work. The concepts are explained and written in a very simplified language so that it caters to either a beginner or an experienced FEA user. The book is very organized and structured in its contents and I highly recommend to get this book to all FEA enthusiasts. I would also like to thank Dominique for his efforts for this amazing book.

Great book. Clean and tidy compilation of methods, procedures and key FEA aspects viewed from an industry perspective. A must have for any FEA/Stress engineer. This is going to be the first reference in my lectures on practical FEA. Great job Dominique!

I just bought this book, and I can say in a sentence “it is the best”. You can learn a lot of practical FEM problems. For me, it answers most of the questions in my mind. There are lots of colourful pictures which makes it more enjoyable to read. The structure is not like submerging yourself into theories and equations.