Ensuring “results reflect reality”

Some small and mid-sized companies are buying software for computational simulation and expecting structural and fluid analysis to follow, but user expertise doesn’t always come with the licence, says Kava Crosson-Elturan.

“Even if you have the expensive software, even if you have the training manuals, that experience is lacking,” says Kava, who leads Computational Systems at Matrix Applied Computing.

He says the new courses, which focus on computational simulation – Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) – are designed to “kickstart that experience”.

His own path into simulation began with a hand-me-down Tandy computer from his grandfather, and a university chemistry professor who pulled him into the lab to model a cooling system. After more than two decades’ experience and having worked on Boeing’s 787 programme, German rail and submarine work, and at Matrix, he’s clear about what a course – can and can’t – do.

The courses will transfer his real-world experience as a simulation engineer to the broader engineering community and “ultimately lift the quality of what we design and make here”.

He has watched the trend of in-house simulation accelerate over the past five or six years and he believes it carries a clear risk. Simulation results can be hard to validate because physical testing is expensive and frequently skipped, he says, adding that is the point of simulating in the first place. But a self-taught engineer can be left repeating the same systematic mistake for years without being caught out.

“Simulation can give you a very convincing answer,” Kava says. “Experience helps you recognise when you shouldn't trust it.”

FEA is the industry-standard method for predicting structural performance. It suits engineers designing structural and mechanical systems and covers the principles behind FEA accuracy, element types, buckling, dynamic analysis, nonlinearity, heat transfer and composite materials. CFD allows engineers to predict pressure drops, forces, heat transfer and complex fluid behaviour before committing to a physical build. It covers turbulence, numerical methods, boundary conditions, multiphase flows, fluid-structure interaction and compressible flow.

Kava says the two courses are independent of each other and can be taken in any order. Both are general-purpose tools built on first-principles physics, applying broadly across the profession.

“A civil or structural engineer might need complex wind loading using CFD, but also FEA for the earthquake response of a building,” Kava says.

“A machine designer might want to simulate the oil flow through a gear train, but also the gears themselves.”

Each course runs over two full days online and follows a deliberate two-pronged structure: theory first, then worked examples, where common pitfalls are revealed and corrected.

“The application changes, but the fundamentals don't,” Kava says. “You still need to know whether your results reflect reality.”

He continues: “You’re not going to become an experienced engineer by attending a course, but you can get a taste of someone else’s experience, best practices, how they’d approach a problem, things they’ve seen that help them decide what to do.”

While Kava says that people new to computational simulation will benefit most from these courses, self-taught veterans will also discover where the default settings quietly save them, and where they don’t.

Both courses count towards annual Continuing Professional Development requirements and offer something the manuals can’t: the chance to network with others entering the simulation space.

Will Pegler is Communications Advisor at Te Ao Rangahau.

Build your computational capability. Explore Engineering New Zealand's specialist FEA and CFD courses at engineeringnz.org/computational

This article was first published in the September 2026 issue of EG magazine.