Over the past few years, several universities and engineering institutes in India have introduced a one-semester course on finite element method at the senior undergraduate level. The material presented in this book covers the syllabus of most such courses. Several worked- out examples, drawn from the fields of structural mechanics, heat transfer and fluid flow, illustrate the important concepts. Some of the issues are in fact brought out through example problems. At the same time, some “problems to investigate” given at the end of each chapter encourage the student to think beyond what has been presented in the book.

FEM is a technique (numerical tool), and the various nuances are best mastered by attempting challenging real-life problems. While teaching the course at IIT Bombay, I have successfully used two types of term projects (running through the semester)-one where a near-real-life problem is modelled using a commercial finite element analysis software and the other where the student attempts to develop his own code and verify the same on simple textbook type problems. Some topics for the former are suggested in Appendix A and a sample code is given in Appendix C for isoparametric, nine-node quadrilateral element.