Numerical Simulation of Structural Carbon Steel, Stainless Steel, and Inconel Alloy 718 Using the Finite Element Method

The aim of this work is the numerical analysis of structural carbon steel solid elements, including medium-strength steel (MS250) and high-strength steel (HS350), as well as 304 stainless steel (SS) and Inconel 718 superalloy (SI). To this end, a mathematical formulation based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) was implemented using the FORTRAN programming language. The aim was to obtain the values of stresses, strains and nodal displacements of the steels and the alloy, assuming that the materials had linear elastic behavior. The von Mises rupture criterion method was used to analyze the stresses. The solid elements were discretized using 4-node tetrahedral (T4) and 8-node hexahedral (H8) finite elements, with each node having three degrees of freedom. In addition, the Gauss-Legendre method (Gauss quadrature) was used to numerically solve the integrals. In order to verify and validate the results obtained with the computer program, comparisons were made with findings in the literature and then numerical analyses of the materials were carried out. The aim of this work is to make a significant contribution to the calculation of stresses, strains and displacements in solids.