Structural fatigue analysis and regulatory automation — Python/HyperView tooling, first applied to railway engineering.
01 — Profile
4th-year engineering student at Polytech Lille (mechanics & structures track), completing a 3.5-month engineering internship at CIMES France (April–July 2026), an engineering firm specialised in railway structures.
My focus: turning complex regulatory checks — fatigue calculation under the European standards EN 17149, EC3 and EC9 — into automated, reliable tools that are directly usable in an engineering office.
02 — Work
Main project · Engineering internship 2026
CIMES France · integrated in Altair HyperView 2025
A plugin fully integrated into Altair HyperView that reads nodal stresses directly from finite element results, computes the fatigue damage index D per element against EN 17149-3, EC3 and EC9, and returns a structured compliance report — turning a multi-hour manual post-processing workflow into a batch run of a few clicks, across every subcase and joint configuration of a model at once.
// Architecture · data flow
Accuracy & validation
EC3 results validated against a reference calculation note, matching within 0.1%. EC9 has no dedicated reference note available, but was cross-checked using the same calculation note as EC3 with adapted inputs, given the methodological proximity between the two standards. EN 17149-3 is partially validated: no independent calculation note exists yet, so results were checked by hand calculation and cross-referenced against an internal client reference document.
Scale
Runs within finite-element models containing several million nodes overall. The tool processes user-defined sets rather than the full mesh in a single run — the largest set processed to date contained 782,345 nodes and 245,679 elements.
Tensorial stress mode
Beyond the standard σ1/σ3 principal-stress mode, a tensorial mode projects the full 6-component stress tensor (XX/YY/ZZ/XY/YZ/ZX) onto a fixed direction per element (P1_max), with cumulative Miner damage summation across load cycles — needed when the critical stress direction isn't aligned with the model's global axes.
Thickness correction
EN 17149-3 and EC3 both apply a thickness correction factor to the fatigue limit (fépais and ks respectively), computed per element from plate thickness extracted directly from the finite element model (PSHELL/SECDATA). EC9 does not include this correction, consistent with EN 1999-1-3 which does not define one for this evaluation method.
03 — In Action
This short video shows the tool under real conditions: importing finite element results into HyperView, running the fatigue verification, and generating the damage contour and compliance report — from model import to final result, with no manual intervention in between.
04 — Skills
Analysis & Standards
Development
Software
Engineering Office
05 — Contact
Currently looking for an engineering internship starting February 2027 — structural analysis, fatigue calculation, and engineering tool automation.