FEM Course MATLAB Assignments

This is a set of weekly MATLAB assignments walking undergrad and grad students in engineering majors (ME, CEE, AE, etc.) through FEM concept

FEM_MATLAB_Assignments

This is a set of weekly MATLAB assignments walking undergrad and grad students in engineering majors (ME, CEE, AE, etc.) through FEM concepts by practically implementing a complete truss analyzing program in MATLAB. A step-by-step problem description is added for each assignment, and a complete solution is also provided. (The same set of assignemt can also be used in Structural Analysis II courses.)

Developed by Shahrokh Shahi
Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing and College of Engineering 2018-2020
www.sshahi.com

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Details:

This repository is part of a set of FEM-related codes, where you can find more details in this blog post.

In general, finite element method (FEM) is used as an effective numerical method to solve differential equations and widely employed in engineering and mathematical modeling, where a mechanical system is divided into discrete subdomains known as finite elements. The technical process of creating finite element meshes and using Gaussian numerical integration to calculate the stiffness of each element, assembly process, and solving the obtained system of equations have always been challenging to implement and understand by both undergrad and graduate students in engineering fields such as Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, etc. Therefore, as a TA in FEM and advanced FEM course, who also held several sessions and workshops for MATLAB programming and developing FEM codes, I started to develop many demonstrations and educational toolboxes to help students internalize these technical steps. The following is the datails regarding these packages and codes predented in the three sub-sections.

During my teaching assistantship in the engineering course, I have also designed and developed a set of weekly programming assignments and group projects to help student go beyond the textbooks theories and get practically engaged in developing actual FEM software. Some of these materials are also available for download in the teaching section of my website. The solutions of the programming assignments have also been provided in this repository.

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Acknowledgement:

Special thanks to the course instructor, Prof. Rafi Muhanna at Georgia Tech for providing the advice and insights towards designing and preparation of the materials.