u/Maleficent_Play1092

I work as an FEA engineer. During an internship I was exposed to optiSLang (DOE, sensitivity analysis, MOP), and that got me interested in moving toward AI/ML for simulation.

If you work in this area:

• Which path did you take, and what would you do differently?
• What skills do employers or teams actually ask for?
• Any project types that worked well as a portfolio (e.g. surrogate vs. full FEA on a simple structure)?

Curious what people actually use in practice as a sanity-check threshold for local plastic strain in elastic-plastic static FEA of ductile steel structures, when fatigue is explicitly out of scope
I know that correct answer is code dependent, but some of them don’t define plastic strain limit at all. Is there any value (1%,2%,5%), that I can assume my structure is safe?

How does junior onboarding look at FEA/CAE companies? What tasks do you assign, how do you evaluate performance, and what's expected?

I'm working on a shell model of a wing segment in ANSYS Mechanical 2025 R2

When I plot Total Deformation (or any directional displacement), parts of the mesh seem to "disappear" or drop out of the visualization. The remaining elements show a weird local bulging pattern instead of the global bending I'd expect from a cantilevered wing under aero pressure. What causes this?

https://preview.redd.it/pn8vqti6ea5h1.png?width=942&format=png&auto=webp&s=669a53248d6802e55865a174e536c2423fd625d5

Hello, I am currently working on my thesis which includes strucutral analysis of wing rib and optimization. I have already performed CFD simulation of airfoil to obatin lift and drag coefficient's.

My models consist two shell ribs, Nose and Rear rib, conected via MPC to mimic assembly conection with rivets.

My question is how should I apply lift and drag forces? I have considered applying them at the aerodynamic center (x/c=25) scoped to the wing flanges, to mimic real world sitation when skin transfers loads to the rib throught flanges. A,B and C are supports.

https://preview.redd.it/kkouolch4rwg1.png?width=550&format=png&auto=webp&s=7444d938e25e95043739a2f4fe7c9f6b0ee8f1e9

https://preview.redd.it/rp186b1y3rwg1.png?width=1072&format=png&auto=webp&s=04e561ac90b0484150fcc89885506a2692806481

https://preview.redd.it/ihhuws9v3rwg1.png?width=318&format=png&auto=webp&s=1bf6ffb83eca8928bb97b66a4fc1f53dfe15b387