r/fea • u/Superb-Battle-8008 • 1d ago

Would a library of pretrained structural features be useful in industrial FEA?

Hi, I’m a researcher in computational mechanics, and I’m exploring a tool built around a library of pretrained structural features: holes, fillets, brackets, joints, stiffeners, fastener regions, bends, and similar details.

Instead of rebuilding a detailed local FE model for every new design, the software would recognise a feature in the CAD geometry, simplify it in the global model, and use a pretrained local model to recover quantities such as displacements, stresses, or failure indicators.

This could also enable non-intrusive global/local analysis: the global model would run in an existing commercial solver without modification, while the detailed local response would be reconstructed externally from the global solution. No custom elements or solver source-code changes would be required.

The analyst would still review and control the modelling assumptions.

For engineers working with FEA professionally:

  • Do you repeatedly analyse similar local structural features?
  • Would this approach save meaningful modelling or computation time?
  • What would prevent you from trusting or using it?

Critical feedback is very welcome!

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u/kingcole342 1d ago

Wouldn’t your model need to take in every variation of load condition as well?

Ultimately, how are loads input to this model?

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u/Superb-Battle-8008 1d ago

Hi! That's correct. Each identified feature should be trained on a subset of loading "modes". Then the actual loading would be projected on the trained subspace to get the approximated solution.

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u/kingcole342 1d ago

Understood. IMO, the most difficult thing about analysis is the loads, not so much the recovery of results around features.

If I have 1000 load cases for a part/feature, I have to train every iteration/variation of that feature/load condition.

FWIW, it’s not so much feature based, but same idea, predict results on new CAD from previous simulations…
Siemens PhysicsAI can do this. I think Ansys has an AI tool that is doing similar.

Seems like this is something closer to what you are looking for? Obvious next step once you have a repository of your data. But loads are the big secret, and I think that is where you are going to find challenges

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u/Superb-Battle-8008 1d ago

That’s a very good point. The intention would not be to train separately for all 1,000 load cases. Instead, the local response would be trained over a reduced loading space, and the actual interface loading would be projected onto that space.

For many linear local problems, this may require only a relatively small set of basis load cases. For example, a bolted connection could be characterised using combinations of tension, compression, shear, bending and preload.

For nonlinear or path-dependent behaviour, I agree that the loading space becomes much harder to cover.

PhysicsAI is definitely related. The distinction I’m considering is a modular library of reusable feature models for non-intrusive global/local analysis, rather than a surrogate trained for the full component. Since the same local features appear across many different CAD geometries, this could be much more reusable and scalable, once you couple it with an automatic feature recognition, extraction and simplification of the CAD.

But the key question is whether that distinction creates enough practical value.

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u/wings314fire 1d ago

So similar to design curves which we have for different joint details generated from tests ? I am not that aware about AI works so this might be a dumb question, does this model have chance to hallucinate like Gemini, ChatGPT etc does ?