which fatigue software to learn?

I did my MSME thesis in fatigue 25+ years ago. Then I did FEA based fatigue for 10+ years at a big automotive OEM, mostly with nCode. They took it pretty seriously. Proving grounds for wheel forces and or other transducers to get awesome load histories, along with specific events that could be built into durability schedules corresponding to customer usage. They had expended a LOT of resources to lay the groundwork out.

I got into ground combat vehicles, and they were using spreadsheet methods. Embarrassing. The powers that be were satisfied with it.

Back into automotive for another stint and nCode had gotten even better with weld and vibration fatigue.

Back into ground combat vehicles again and I was finally able to use nCode there. It was like pulling teeth to get the small FEA group to use it though. The design engineers and managers weren’t familiar with it and most didn’t understand fatigue to begin with. They just wanted to check their box saying “yeah, Analysis did that”.

/r/fea Thread Parent