In a recent S.A.F.E.R. Simulation post, we announced that ESRD Chairman Dr. Barna Szabó had posed a new “FEA Puzzler” in the October 2018 edition of NAFEMS Benchmark magazine. This challenge problem related to determining incremental spring rates for a coil spring under axial displacement AND demonstrating that the approximation errors are small via solution verification procedures.

As a refresher, the original NAFEMS FEA Puzzler description was as follows:

As noted in a January 2019 LinkedIn post by Mr. David Quinn (Chief Marketing Officer at NAFEMS), the original deadline of February 1st, 2019 has been extended an additional four (4) months. From Mr. Quinn’s post:

Send your responses, in confidence, to Professor Szabó at challenge@nafems.org. Responses of sufficient merit will win an exclusive NAFEMS business card holder, and a summary of the responses will be published without attribution in a future issue of Benchmark.

The challenge will close on June 1st 2019 – best of luck!

So, there is still ample time to submit your solutions (along with proof of solution verification) to challenge@nafems.org. Feel free to use any FEA software tool, and make note of your modeling process and interpretation of results.

Need A Hint?

To help provide a nudge in the right direction, ESRD has recorded the following teaser video using its StressCheck Professional FEA software to show some of the model setup and results processing (no actual values, that would be cheating!):

Dr. Szabó and NAFEMS are very much looking forward to your submissions!