A Roadmap of NAFEMS Documents

This Roadmap includes all NAFEMS publications issued since the organizations inception in 1985 until July 2004. Some 123 documents are included. In the early days of the organization, emphasis was on producing well-defined benchmark tests and some basic Primers suitable for the practising engineer rather than the finite element theoretician. More latterly, the emphasis has shifted to producing the "How To" and "Why Do" booklets, concerning particular aspects within the finite element technology. Some specific reports were produced for the GEM and SAFESA projects, along with some concerning quality assurance and software management. Additional initiatives have produced workbooks and case studies with strong educational flavours as well as a series of one-day Seminar and multi-day Conference proceedings. All these different types of publication are identified in this Roadmap. The publications have generally been commissioned under the auspices of NAFEMS Working Groups, and so reflect user-driven demands and needs at the time of production. Some of the documents cover elementary introductions to theory and practice, whilst others are aimed at the more advanced reader. The total publication list provides a very comprehensive and important library base for the modern finite element user, covering virtually every aspect of the subject in varying degrees of complexity. Each document is identified by a reference number, a tag of a few digits, such as P01, R0001, FEP, EEP, etc. These appear on the NAFEMS publication lists, and are used in this Roadmap to identify documents in the main glossary sections. From these reference numbers, the full details of the document can be found by referring to the full publication list given in chapter 6. An important function of this Roadmap is to identify all the NAFEMS publications and to guide the reader through the large amount of information contained within them. The chapters therefore contain complementary information for the issues that are thought to be of interest, and have been organized as follows: * Chapter 2, the main glossary of subject headings, including a brief explanation of the subject as well as a listing of related documents, * Chapter 3, a glossary of important technical terms which are relevant to and occur throughout the publications, again including a listing of related documents, * Chapter 4, a glossary of the many benchmark tests that have been produced and details of the documents in which they appear, * Chapter 5, a glossary of other material, where brief descriptions and references are given for the case studies, workbooks, the GEM and SAFESA projects, management of data and finite element analysis, quality systems and management, surveys and proceedings, * Chapter 6, a complete listing of NAFEMS publications, sorted by reference number, * Chapter 7, a Table identifying the publications by subject and type of document.