Researched
Finite Element Method
A 1956 paper by Turner, Clough, Martin and Topp (Boeing) and Clough's naming in 1960 turn a structure into a mesh of small elements solved by computer, now the standard way to simulate stress, heat and flow.
Open in the interactive tree →The ideas go back to Hrennikoff and Courant in the early 1940s, who split a domain into small pieces, and to Argyris. The 1956 Boeing paper in the Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences is credited as the first finite element paper, and Ray Clough coined the name in 1960. NASA sponsored the original NASTRAN program, and Strang and Fix gave the method a rigorous mathematical basis in 1973; today it designs bridges, engines and chips and simulates frontal car crashes.
Prerequisites
- Partial Differential Equations1747Stress, heat and flow are described by partial differential equations
- Linear Algebra & Matrices1858A mesh turns the equations into large systems of linear equations
- Programmable Computer (Zuse Z3)1941Solving thousands of equations needs a computer