FEA - Finite element Analysis in General has the following four phases .
- Problem Understanding.
- Pre processing
- Processing
- Post processing
In Problem Understanding phase one should define the problem statement and requirement clealry that inturn helps to select the components that are needed to be meshed.
Pre processing involves Geometry prepartion, geometry cleanup and meshing of required components, applying load cases and other restraints.
Processing is nothing but feeding the mesh model into a FEA solver and requests the solver to run the Model and solve the calculation. Nastran, Hyperworks optistruct are some of the familiar FEA solvers in the market.
Post processing involves interpretation of the results using a post processing application and generating reports to check whether the component meets the required target criteria like stress, amplitude, modal frequency etc.