Use of ANSYS and Matlab in an introductory finite element course
Lori Graham and Maryam Khan
Department of Civil Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218
Abstract
In order to meet the needs of a diverse student
audience, an introductory finite element course
requires a strong computational component that
enhances the theoretical aspects of the course. In
four years of instructing this course, the
computational content has evolved significantly in
response to the lessons learned in each year of
instruction. The metrics used to evaluate relative
success of the course from year to year are the
comments from the students as well as the
observations regarding their performance on exams.
The most successful platform has been to combine
the use of ANSYS, which provides a strong physical
intuition for thermal/structural problems through its
pre- and post-processors, with the use of a Matlab-
based finite element code, which required that the
students learn how a finite element program is
written. This Matlab-based program is discussed in
this paper and is currently available to the public via
the worldwide web.
Introduction
A number of educational innovations involving finite
element techniques are found in the literature and on
the worldwide web. Some such successful projects
include the design of a key chain charm, a writing
linkage, a feeding device for quadriplegics, and an
assistive robot arm for wheelchair users, all of which
have arisen from a multi-university design project
program1 New teaching techniques such as creating
well balanced approaches between theory and
application are also being developed by the
engineering departments at various universities to
help students improve design optimization capability
and apply finite element techniques for model
testing.2 Web-based learning modules with
capabilities for analyzing bar and beam elements
have been integrated into the introductory
undergraduate finite element course at Worcester
Polytechnic Institute. 3 At Temple University, a
university/industry collaborative senior design
project was implemented to solve industrial design
and material problems using computer simulations
with the finite element analysis software ANSYS.4
Furthermore, at the United States Naval Academy,
students are given a brief introduction to the
fundamentals of the finite element method through a
project requiring the design of a bracket that must
meet size, load, and deflection requirements.5 These
are only a few examples of the power of
computational advances in finite element education,
not only specifically for finite element courses but
also for a suite of other courses in civil or
mechanical engineering.
Most civil and mechanical engineers agree that
finite element analysis is a fundamental skill for
analysis of thermal, solid and structural problems.
Unfortunately, the proper instruction of finite
element analysis in undergraduate course work is
quite difficult to achieve effectively. Most
departments do not have the opening in their
curriculum to require this course of every
undergraduate student; however, without a sufficient
population of students to fill this course, the
department is unable to devote the necessary
resources to teach this as an elective to a fully
undergraduate-level department course.
A number of departments are able to populate an
introductory finite element course by sharing
instruction of this course between departments
and/or by cross-listing this course as an
undergraduate/graduate course. Merging
undergraduate and graduate students from multiple
departments into the same course presents a major
challenge to the instructor. The diversity of the
student population requires that the course satisfy a
variety of educational needs for an audience with a
range of interests and fundamental skills. Some
students have plans to enter industry in the
immediate future, so that use of a commercial finite
element package to reinforce their physical
understanding of structural and thermal phenomena
would be their main interest in the course. Other
students plan to pursue a graduate engineering
degree, and thus require a more rigorous introduction
into finite element methods, with a heavy emphasis
on mathematics and programming. To achieve both
of these goals in a single course can seem daunting;
therefore, it is critical that the computational work is
complementary to the handwritten work and lecture
discussion.
This paper outlines a successful approach to
computation in an introductory course in finite
elements that is currently in place at the Johns
Hopkins University. While many of the assignments
provided practical training through the use of
ANSYS6, exposure to programming based on the
theory was provided through a final project that
made use of a finite element code written in Matlab.
Because of the object-oriented nature of Matlab, this
code is easy to follow and change. It is available to
the public for downloading at
www.ce.jhu.edu/lgraham/fecode.htm.
Background and past experiences
The computational content of the introductory finite
element course taught by the first author (both at the
University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins
University) has evolved significantly. In large part,
each change in the course has been in response to
student performance and feedback in the previous
years. In the first year of teaching this course, most
of the weekly homework assignments were based on
the fundamental development of finite element
theory, using the text by Segerlind7. There was little
to any use of finite element programs, except for the
course project, which required students to add an
element subroutine to an existing FORTRAN-based
finite element code, which was programmed by the
instructor beforehand. While the programming
assignment forced students to strengthen
programming skills and achieve some understanding
of the flow of a finite element program, there were a
number of pitfalls that arose. Some of the students
had not been exposed to FORTRAN before the class
and spent much of their time learning the
programming language. The input and output were
both difficult to interpret and provided very little
physical intuition to the students. The strongly
theoretical nature of the assignments, coupled with
an unfriendly user-interface for the FORTRAN code,
left the students unsure of any practical uses for the
techniques they had learned. Students specifically
cited that the “mathematical derivations got long and
tedious”, and that “without many physical examples
I didn’t know what I was doing”. It was clear that
there was a need for a more practical orientation in
this introductory course.
In the second year of teaching this course, the
weekly homework assignments were based again on
fundamental theory of finite element analysis, but
also included problems that students were asked to
analyze using the ANSYS finite element package.
The programming project was discarded completely
and was replaced by a project requiring analysis of a
suspension bridge using ANSYS. Because of its
clear and consistent presentation, the text by
Segerlind7 was used again. The instruction in
applying ANSYS to physical problems was met with
enthusiasm by the students. The pre- and post-
processing helped them to develop a more complete
physical intuition for structural and thermal analyses.
The students were almost unanimous in their
positive response to ANSYS. Unfortunately, based
on performance in the exams it seemed that the
general understanding of the fundamentals declined
significantly from the previous year’s class. The
students could not grasp the connection between the
approaches they studied in lecture to the ANSYS
“black-box” that provided them with simple point-
and-click input and easy to read output. These issues
were confirmed by many of the comments provided
by student course evaluations, such as “I had a
difficult time relating the theory to what we’ve done
in ANSYS”, and “the theory was hard to appreciate”.
In order to provide some connection between
ANSYS and the finite element theory in the third
year of this course, Mathcad programming was
introduced into the weekly homework assignments,
which also contained handwritten theoretical
developments and application of ANSYS to
thermal/structural problems. Again, an ANSYS
analysis of a bridge was used as a final course
project. Mathcad as a programming environment
provided the major advantage that it is easily
learned, so that no students were at a disadvantage
based on their previous programming courses. The
Mathcad programming assignments helped
somewhat to bridge the gap between finite element
theory and ANSYS, although the students still
seemed to struggle with this connection. By learning
Mathcad as a tool the students were able to perform
algebraic and matrix manipulations much more
quickly, which reduced the heavy time load
associated with handwritten problems. The choice of
Mathcad for a finite element course, however, may
not have been the most appropriate programming
environment. Mathcad has tremendous strengths as a
symbolic mathematical tool that students find easy to
learn, but for finite element programs that require a
number of programming loops and large matrices
Mathcad proved to be somewhat cumbersome.
Because it is more readily applied to matrix
analysis, Matlab was chosen in the fourth year of this
course as the main programming platform. A number
of instructors have found Matlab to be very useful in
their courses, mainly due to its robustness and
simplicity of use. Courses at many different
universities are using Matlab for major projects. A
few examples of these projects include the
reconstruction of a desired signal from filtered
samples in a real-time filter, 8 application of Matlab
to issues in wireless communication9, and the design
and fabrication of a “one-blade” windshield wiper
mechanism.10 The excellent track-record of Matlab
in educational enhancements, as demonstrated
through these and hundreds of other successful
course assignments currently in place in universities
across the country, led to the choice of Matlab for
the finite element programming assignments.
Integration of ANSYS and the Matlab-based FEA
program
A finite element code (fem_main) for one- and two-
dimensional steady-state thermal analysis was made
available to the students at the beginning of the
course. This program served as the basis for many
weekly homework assignments, as well as for the
final programming project. It can be downloaded at
the web site: www.ce.jhu.edu/lgraham/fecode.htm.
A flow chart for the program (fem_main) is provided
in Figure 1. Also included is a post-processor
subroutine (fem_post), which allows the user to
make plots for 1-dimensional and 2-dimensional
problems, including a mesh plot, temperature
contours, heat flux contours, temperature gradient
contours, and heat flux vector plots.
The weekly homework assignments in the fourth
year of this course contained 3 types of problems:
handwritten problems based on theory, application
of the Matlab-based finite element program to
analyze problems, and the use of ANSYS to analyze
the same problems. In many cases the results from
Matlab and ANSYS were used for mutual
verification. Because of its direct connection to
ANSYS and its clear presentation of the finite
element theory, the text by Moaveni was selected for
this course11. As an example of such a problem,
consider the triangular aluminum cooling fin taken
from the text by Moaveni9, shown in Figure 2. These
aluminum fins are used to remove heat from a
surface whose temperature is 150o C, when the
temperature of the surrounding air is 20o C, the
natural heat transfer coefficient associated with the
surrounding air is 30 W/m*K, and the thermal
conductivity of aluminum is 168 W/m*K. The
temperature distribution in the fin as calculated from
the Matlab-based “fem_main” is given in Figure 3,
while the temperature distribution calculated in
ANSYS is given in Figure 4. In the homework
assignment, the students were asked to confirm that
there is agreement between the results from the two
programs.
Read control information
Calculate stiffness
matrix
Read coordinates

Read temperature Solve for vector

boundary conditions of unknowns
Echo input to
output file
Read applied heat Place unknowns into
sources and sinks
nodal temperature matrix

Read material
properties Calculate element heat
fluxes and temperature
gradients
Read element connectivity

Figure 1: Flow Chart for Matlab-based finite element program (fem_main).

20 mm

90 mm
Figure 2: Aluminum cooling fins studied using finite element programs (taken from text by
Moaveni11, page 309)
 Figure 3: Temperature distribution in fin, as calculated by the Matlab-based “fem_main”
program and plotted by the “fem_post” program

Figure 4: Temperature distribution calculated in ANSYS

As a final programming project, the students
were asked to enhance the Matlab finite element
program by adding a new capability. Capabilities that
the undergraduates in the course undertook were the
development of (1) a graphical user interface for
creating input files; (2) capabilities for three-
dimensional thermal analysis; (3) a program for
converting ANSYS input files to Matlab input files;
(4) capabilities for beam/frame analysis; (5)
capabilities for 2D and 3D truss analysis; and (6)
development of a biquadratic quadrilateral thermal
element. The graduate projects included (1) nonlinear
two-dimensional thermal analysis; (2) Monte Carlo
simulation of a beam with random elastic modulus;
(3) transient thermal analysis; (4) plane stress
analysis; (5) buckling analysis of beam-column
structures; (6) eigenvalue analysis of beam-column
structures; and (7) plate bending analysis. These
projects were all selected by the individual students
and were motivated by their own interests in civil or
mechanical engineering. At the end of the course, the
subroutines from all of the projects were merged into
a single multi-functional code that was distributed to
every student in the course for future use.
 The students did extremely well on the final
exam, which was similar in content to that of
previous years, indicating that their grasp of the
theories developed in the course is solid. Further, the
student evaluation comments indicated that the
course project was an overwhelming success. Some
typical comments were that “the project was time-
consuming but worthwhile,” and “the project was a
critical aspect to the course”. Many were also
pleased that the flexible nature of the project allowed
them to prepare for their own future research or
career choices. While there were still a few
complaints that the development of the theory was
tedious, almost all students admitted that the
understanding of the theory as implemented in the
program “fem_main” has given them a better sense
of how a commercial finite element code operates.
Conclusions
In order to meet the needs of a diverse student
audience in an introductory finite element course,
this paper presents a successful approach to
assignments. This approach includes three types of
assignments: handwritten assignments that address
the basic finite element theory, regular computational
assignments that make use of ANSYS and a “home-
grown” Matlab-based finite element program to
study the physical thermal and structural phenomena,
and a final project in which students are asked to
enhance the Matlab-based finite element program.
The students are exposed to finite element theory as
well as its implementation in commercial codes. In
working with commercial codes, students gain a
better insight into thermal and structural analyses,
and they are more directly prepared for using finite
elements in an engineering industry environment.
Further, through use of the Matlab-based code
(fem_main), they gain insight into the inner workings
of any finite element code. The success of this
approach is measured by enhanced student
performance on tests and assignments, as well as by
the increased level of enthusiasm among the students.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Science Foundation
Grant # CMS-9875516, with Dr. Peter Chang as Program
Director.
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