INTRODUCTION TO FINITE

MAK 372E (22764) ELEMENT METHODS

2022 - 2023 SPRING

Instructor : Mesut Kırca

Office : Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Room No: 306
Phone : (0531) 2158640
E-mail : kircam@itu.edu.tr
Lecture hours : Wednesday 12:30-15:30 (D318)
Office hours : Monday 13:30-16:30, Friday 13:30-16:30

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Introduction to fundamentals of Finite Element Method (FEM), Direct Approach, Heat

Conduction Elements, Springs and Truss Elements, Beam Elements, FE Formulation for
General Continuum, Plane Stress and Plane Strain Elements, Finite Elements and Interpolation
Functions, Element Formulation in Natural Coordinates, Numerical Integration, Weighted
Residual Methods, Applications.

TEXTBOOK:

M. Asghar Bhatti
“Fundamental Finite Element Analysis And Applications: With Mathematica And MATLAB
Computations”, John Wiley & Sons (Feb 2005)

OTHER REFERENCES:

1. Chandrupatla T. R. and A. D. Belegundu, “Introduction to Finite Elements in

Engineering”, Prentice Hall, 2002.
2. Cook R. D. Malkus D.S., Plesha M.E., “The Finite Element Method and Applications in
Eng. Using ANSYS”, Springer, 2015.
3. Hinton E. and Owen D.R.J., "An Introduction to Finite Element Computations" Pineridge
Press Limited, 1979
4. Bathe K. J., "Finite Element Procedures", Prentice-Hall, 1996.
5. Moaveni S. "Finite Element Analysis: Theory and Applications with ANSYS", Prentice-
Hall, 2014.
6. E. Madenci and I. Guven “The Finite Element Method and Applications in Engineering
Using ANSYS”, Springer-Verlag, 2015.

OBJECTIVES:

1. Teaching the basic theoretical principles of the Finite Element Method,

2. Understand the difference between various types of elements, to design and judge a
mesh,
3. Impose displacement and force boundary conditions, and to demonstrate convergence,
4. Be able to interpret and report FE results,
5. Be able to use FE method as a tool to solve engineering problems.
 OUTCOMES:

Student, who passed the course satisfactorily will:

1. gain knowledge on fundamentals and applications of FEM,
2. be able to select appropriate finite elements and mesh, be able to apply loads and
boundary conditions to the model,
3. be able to formulae and solve engineering problems using FEM,
4. be able to start using FEM for design purposes.

COURSE PLAN:

Week Topics
1 Introduction to FEM, Review of Matrix Operations
2 Common Procedure in FEM, Discrete elements
3 Direct Approach, Bar and Truss Elements Homework 1
4 Heat Conduction Element, Assembly Process
5 Direct formulation of Beam Elements
6 General Continuum and Energy Methods Homework 2
7 Continuous Rod Elements
8 Plane Stress and Plane Strain Elements,
9 Axisymmetric elements, Elements and Interpolation Homework 3
Functions
Elements and Interpolation Functions
10
11 Element Formulation in Natural Co-ordinates
12 Isoparametric Elements, Numerical Integration Homework 4
13 Weighted Residual Methods and Energy Method
14 Applications, practical considerations and advanced issues

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA:

Midterm Exams Quantity: 1 Percentage : 30%

Homeworks Quantity: 4 Percentage : 20%
Project Quantity: 1 Percentage : 10%
Final Exam Quantity: 1 Percentage : 40%
NOTE:
• In order to be able to take the final exam:
✓ your average score of the homeworks (1, 2 & 3) must not be less than 30, and
Cours
✓ the midterm score must not be less than 30.
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Cours
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Additional considerations apply! Read below for details!

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS:

1. Refresh your experience on Linear Algebra, Computer Programming, Differential

Equations Strength of Materials & Heat Transfer courses.
2. You will have to write your own codes (i.e., MATLAB, C/C++, FORTRAN, etc..)
during homeworks. The codes should be provided as appendices to each homework.
Direct copy paste of codes and software output values result in cumbersome text. You
are responsible for page layout arrangement.
3. Homeworks have to be prepared and presented neatly. They should have a clean and
tracable layout.
4. Copy-paste style homeworks will be graded “0” (zero) points regardless of their
content!
5. Students are expected to be tight on schedules. Delays will not be tolerated or there will
be a considerable reduction of grade. Good engineers keep track of their schedules.
6. An additional hands-on computer session recordings will be provided:
a. In this session you will be asked to run an analysis or do some steps of an analysis
using a commercial software such as Abaqus or Ansys.
b. The application will be about the topic you studied during preparing one of the
homeworks. You will be asked to run a simple but similar analysis depicted in the
tutorials, which will be considered as a part of the grading.
c. Besides you are supposed to submit a term project using a commercial code whose
details will be announced later.