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FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center, ANG-E262.

FEAFAA Version 1.42 (September 24, 2009)

FEAFAA (Finite Element Analysis - FAA) was developed by the FAA Airport Technology R&D Branch as a
stand-alone tool for 3D finite element analysis of multiple-slab rigid airport pavements and overlays. It is useful
for computing accurate responses (stresses, strains and deflections) of rigid pavement structures to individual
aircraft landing gear loads. The FAA does not officially support the program as a standard nor sanction any use
of the results. A help file is included which gives brief information on the capabilities of the program and how to
use the various features. It would probably be useful to print the help file for reference as there is currently no
other documentation describing operation of the program. English units are used throughout, so the finite
element output data should be interpreted in terms of English units (length in inches, stresses in psi, etc.).

We would appreciate any comments you may have on the program with regard to errors, features that don't work
properly, features that could be added, etc. Please send comments to David.Brill@faa,gov. FEAFAA 1.42 is not
an official FAA standard, specification or regulation.

Minimum requirements to run FEAFAA 1.42 are a PC with Windows 2000 or higher, and a minimum of 256
megabytes of RAM. However, Windows XP or higher with at least 512 MB of RAM is recommended for best
performance. Users running Windows 2000 Professional may need to install Service Pack 4.

The download includes a utility program called NIKEPLOT, which is useful for postprocessing the 3D finite
element output data (which can be voluminous). To use NikePlot, make sure that the Nike3D generated output
file n3dhsp is in the same folder as file NIKEPLOT1-5.exe. Click on NIKEPLOT1-5 and a DOS window will
appear. Respond to ant prompts from the program. NIKEPLOT generates ASCII (text) files called
model_load.dat and model_stress_x.dat that can be read or converted by commercial 3D-FEM postprocessing
programs such as TecPlot. NIKEPLOT is provided as a convenience to the user and the FAA makes no
representation as to its accuracy. The FAA does not officially support the program as a standard nor sanction any
use of the results.

FEAFAA Version 2.0 (September 14, 2011)

FEAFAA 2.0 differs from the previous version as follows:

1. The user has the ability to select the number of slabs for analysis (1, 2, 4, 6 or 9).

2. The user has the ability to control the mesh density (number of element subdivisions in the mesh) for the PCC
slab and the foundation. The higher the mesh density, the longer the execution may take. (Note that no check of
memory is made, so it is possible to create a mesh that exceeds the available resources.)

3. A Position Check function was added to ensure that the tire is located within the slab area.

4. FEAFAA 2.0 has the ability to analyze combined vehicle load and temperature curling. The temperature
gradient is defined by specifying the top and bottom slab temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit. The user has the
option of selecting the slab curled shape (circular or catenary). While it is common to assume a circular
(spherical) curled slab under a uniform temperature gradient prior to the application of load, the catenary shape
may be more appropriate in cases where curling is dominated by moisture gradients.

5. Joint stiffness/dowel bar data may be entered separately for the longitudinal and transverse directions.

6. The boundary spring stiffness parameter can be adjusted in the longitudinal and transverse directions. (This
may be helpful in some cases where convergence is not achieved under the default settings.)

7. Jobs may be stored and retrieved from a user-specified directory. This eliminates the need to re-enter the data
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for each run.

8. The NIKEPLOT utility has been integrated and is callable from the main program.

9. The user help file has been updated.

10. The buffer size has been increased to allow larger problems. Currently, problems sizes of over 220,000
equations have been run successfully, although, as a general rule, much larger problem sizes require longer
execution times and more available memory.

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