This paper on "Some Lessons from Collaborative Benchmarking Exercises" was presented at the NAFEMS World Congress on Design, Simulation & Optimisation: Reliability & Applicability of Computational Methods - 9-11 April 1997, Stuttgart, Germany.

Abstract

Some observations are presented based on the results of several recent collaborative benchmarking exercises and an attempt is made to explore the meaning of the terms verification and validation in the context of present day use of commercial third-party finite element software for structural integrity assessments. The role of benchmarking within a Quality Assurance hierarchy and its relationship to other issues including calibration, qualification and treatment of uncertainty is explored.