With fe-safe™ as an integrated part of your design process, you have the ability to optimise designs and test programs, reduce prototype test times product recalls and warranty costs - all with increased confidence that your product designs pass their test schedules as “right first time”.

fe-safe™

• calculates fatigue lives at every point on a model, producing contour plots to reveal fatigue lives and crack sites. Critical points need not be missed.
• determines how much the stresses must be changed in order to achieve a target design life showing clearly where the component is under strength, or where material and weight can be saved
• estimates warranty claim curves based on probabilities of failure
• calculates which parts of the service duty are most damaging and which could be omitted from a fatigue test
• identifies non-critical loads at significant points on a model. In prototype testing this could mean tests using fewer loads and therefore fewer actuators

fe-safe™.....MORE THAN JUST A FATIGUE ANALYSIS TOOL

fe-safe™

• not only shows the calculated life but also the rationale behind the calculations. This builds up design expertise, allowing new designs to be highly optimised more quickly.
• is highly cost-effective, being shown to save many times its cost through reduced man-time hours. The additional saving is immense if one prototype test can be eliminated, or a premature failure avoided.
• continues to be selected by Fortune 100 and blue chip companies, renowned for their innovative and advanced design programmes, to optimise the design of components and validate component test programmes.

FAST - Assemblies of different parts, materials and surface finish can be analysed in a single run – fe-safe™ automatically changes the method of analysis as it moves from one material to another. Contour plots showing the fatigue life at each node, the factor of strength, and probabilities of survival can be calculated in the same run.

ACCURATE – Advanced multiaxial algorithms are the core of fe-safe™. Our nodal elimination method ensures no trade-off between speed and accuracy. Customers constantly report excellent correlation with test results. Continuous development ensures fe-safe™ maintains its position as the technology leader

EASY TO USE - fe-safe™ automatically selects the most appropriate algorithm based on the selected material. Direct interfaces to leading FEA suites such as ABAQUS, ANSYS, I-deas, NASTRAN and Pro/Mechanica are driven from an intuitive, single screen, windows based GUI.

ACCURATE FATIGUE ANALYSIS IS AS EASY AS…
FE ANALYSIS + LOADINGS + MATERIAL DATA + fe-safe™

Loadings

fe-safe™ can predict fatigue lives from a range of loading types:

• Single load-time history applied to a linear elastic finite element model
• Multiple time histories of loading superimposed in fe-safe™ (more than 4000 load histories can be applied)
• Sequence of FEA stresses (elastic or elastic-plastic, linear or non-linear)
• Modal superimposition
• PSD loading, block loading test programs, rainflow cycle matrices
• Effects of forming or assemble stresses can be include

fe-safe™ includes powerful simple-to-use batch command system, with on-line parametric variation for ‘sensitivity’ studies.
Standard analyses can be set up and saved for re-use.

Analysis Methods

fe-safe™ includes a wide range of analysis methods, all of which are included in the standard package:

• Strain-based multiaxial fatigue algorithms - axial strain, shear strain, Brown-Miller from FEA stresses, with a multi-axial Neuber’s rule and cyclic plasticity model
• S-N curve analysis including multiaxial fatigue using axial stress or a new Brown-Miller analysis formulated for use with S-N curves
• Dang Van multiaxial fatigue for high cycle design
• Plots of materials data including the effect of temperature, strain rate etc
• Advanced analysis methods for fatigue of cast irons
• Analysis of welded joints
• High temperature fatigue included as standard
• Analysis from elastic and elastic-plastic FEA stresses, linear and non-linear analysis
• Interfaces to ABAQUS (.fil & .odb), ANSYS (.rst), MSC.Nastran (.op2 & .f06), NX Nastran (.op2 & .f06), Pro/Mechanica (ASCII & binary), IDEAS (.unv), ADAMS, .dac, MTS .RPCIII (.rsp), BEASY, FEMSYS, CADFIX, Altair HyperMesh & Optistruct

UNIAXIAL AND CRITICAL PLANE MULTIAXIAL STRESS-LIFE AND
STRAIN-LIFE METHODS ARE INCLUDED AS STANDARD

Output

fe-safe™ outputs a wide range of results, in a single run:

• Contours of fatigue life show crack initiation site
• Contours of stress-based factors of strength for a specified design life – to show how much the stresses must be changed to prevent failure or to reduce material costs
• Probability of survival for specified lives (the ‘warranty curve’)
• Determines which loads need to be included in a test programme
• Contour plots of maximum stress during loading
• Detailed results – time histories of stresses and strain, Haigh and Smith diagrams, Dang Van plots and many more in order to explain the rationale behind the life prediction
• Damage at the critical location from each loading block – for example each road surface on a test track.

• Comprehensive materials data-base of strain-life and S-N curve properties – may be extended by the user
• Materials approximation algorithm
• AFS database of strain-life fatigue properties for cast iron
• Materials support services including ‘materials searches’ and materials testing, including high temperature and thermo-mechanical testing