Sam Kassegne

I hold a doctorate degree in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  I had worked under Professor J.N. Reddy who is an internationally acknowledged leader in Finite Element Theory. Dr. Reddy is currently at Texas A&M. 

I have about 10 years experience in developing advanced FE theory formulations and software. My experiences cover composite structures (plates and shells), building structures (under static and dynamic/earthquake loading), multiphysics FEA and  mechanical devices. 

I am also very much interested in the software aspect of FEA. Numerical solution algorithms, large-scale parallel and distributed computing, web-based technologies, COM/DCOM, Object-oriented programming techniques,  computational mechanics interest me.

I have also been teaching Principles and Practices of FEA to practicing electrical, mechanical, structural, industrial, geo-technical and bio-medical engineers in the San Diego area at UCSD (University Of California, San Diego) extension. My students have come from leading San Diego area firms such as Qualcomm, Kyocera, SAIC, Honeywell, General Dynamics, TRW and the Navy. 

The MEMS Course is scheduled to be given twice in 2001 also.

Bill Bulat

Education:
MSME Systems and Dynamics, University of Washington - 03/89
BSME honors, California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo - 08/81
Physics major, University of California at Santa Cruz 

I have been using ANSYS for approximately 17 years and have experience with nearly every solution capability that the program offers. I am particularly experienced at performing electromagnetic, electrostatic, and coupled field solutions, and have taught the ANSYS electromagnetics course perhaps half a dozen times.

Papers I have written which have been published in ANSYS Conference proceedings include:

1994: “A Large Deflection Coupled Electrostatic-Structural Analysis”
1996: “Transient Analysis of a Permanent Magnet Bearing”
1998: “3D Induction Heating Simulation of a Helical Gear”
2000: “EM Modeling of Unexploded Ordnance Using ANSYS”

I am also proficient in the use of ANSYS/LS Dyna explicit dynamics, and wrote a specialized UIDL (ANSYS menu) interface which simplifies the setup and execution of drop test simulations. I wrote a 3 day training coarse on the use of ANSYS in simulating residual stresses produced by packaging. This course was taught in Hsinchu, Taiwan, at ANSYS Inc., and at Silverado Software and Consulting. Additionally, I created and presented a coupled fields solution capabilities presentation in Tokyo.

I did my first MEMS force versus voltage analysis in 1993 - presented methodology at the 1994 ANSYS Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. This was fairly involved. ANSYS had no electrostatic elements at the time (I used steady state current conduction elements analogously). Electrostatic force evaluation, subsequent transfer to the structural model, displacement updates to the electrostatic analysis, files handling all had to be done with macros (it's all pretty much automatic these days).

For me, things were slow in this arena for quite some time until 1996 or so, when a few scattered individuals became interested in applying the methodology. Then we did quite a lot of consulting for a micro mirror customer in 1998 or 1999 here at CSI. This was before ESSOLV and mesh morphing were added to ANSYS (the current release of ANSYS at the time was 5.5 - the MEMS initiative came at release 5.6). We used structural elements in the electrostatic domain between electrodes to accomplish "morphing" (I still use this technique from time to time).

The past year or so we've not been asked to do consulting so much as demonstrate ANSYS to prospects and training.

I guess you could say this: my main responsibilities at Collaborative Solutions, Inc (CSI) are to train and provide technical support to multidisciplinary and coupled fields ANSYS users and to perform electromagnetic and coupled field simulations on a consulting basis.