Patent ID: 8200458

Claim:
A method of creating numerically simulated rigid bodies representing a large number of granular particles in a finite element analysis in a CAE system comprising: defining, in a computer system having a finite element analysis application module installed thereon, a finite element analysis model having a plurality of nodal points and at least one rigid finite element, each of the at least one rigid finite element having a set of user defined information representing one or more physical quantities; creating an array of node flags each flag being associated with corresponding one of the plurality of nodal points and being initialized with a value that is greater than largest identification (ID) of all of said at least one rigid finite element and then looping through said all of the at least one rigid finite element once, wherein at each currently processed element in said looping, examining corresponding node flags of the currently processed element's nodes; when said corresponding node flags contain only the initialized value, creating a new list representing one of one or more simulated rigid bodies and labeled said new list with the currently processed element's ID and updating the corresponding node flags with the ID; when said corresponding node flags contain either the initialized numerical value or a particular list's ID, adding the currently processed element into the particular list and updating the corresponding node flags with the particular list's ID; when said corresponding node flags contain more than one lists' ID, merging all of the more than one lists into one of the said more than one lists having smallest ID, updating the corresponding node flags with the smallest ID; and calculating a set of physical properties of said each simulated rigid body in accordance with the set of user defined information corresponding each rigid finite element in said corresponding list such that said each simulated rigid body is set up to be processed in the finite element analysis for assisting user to make decision in improvement of engineering product design.