FEM meaning in oil and gas

A very powerful computational method to build a mathematical model of any physical obejct. Nowadays this method is used in nearly every field/dicipline of engineering from survey to stress and strenght calculations and even in medicine. The basic principle is to build a surface model first by dividing the object on finite segments and nodes, then to calculate the associated stresses for each segment and by integrating those over whole getting the overall results. Although the results are generally very close to the actual behaviour of the original system, the process of calculation itself requires a very powerful computer system and generally for complex shapes/systems the calculation time is quite long.<p> Some of the most common FEM software packages are ANSYS & ABAQUS. Also many of the CAD/CAM programs (Ideas, Solid Works, Genius and CATIA) base their simulation tools on FEM calculations.