Book Review: Beyond the Mountain by Steve House

This is a solid mountaineering book. Steve describes the process of him going from a naive teenager to that of an experienced, one of the world's best, alpinists. He covers everything from being terrified on a 5.9 route (relatively easy) and using ancient climbing gear to getting divorced and his friends dying.

Much of the book reads like a journal or a conversation. He takes snippets of his life that were the more dramatic and puts them together in Beyond the Mountain. That is to say that much of the book can stand alone. Several of the chapters are short eulogies to alpinists died in the mountains. Others are trip reports of first ascents. Together it is an accurate description of what he gave to get to that level both on a physical and emotional level.

Beyond the Mountain struck me not for the descriptions of difficult climbing, which I promptly forgot, but for the emotional aspect. He tries several times to describe the connection between people after completing a very difficult and dangerous route. He describes the connection as one that might even be stronger than between a married couple. His descriptions reminded me of war veterans that often say they were closer to the people they served with than anyone else in their life. Veterans shared with each other in a way that people who weren't there don't understand. From my limited experience in that type of stressful situation I have an inkling of what they mean. Steve House, in my opinion, really centers his book around trying to describe those emotions.

It is a very insightful book into the life of one of the best alpinists. I will not say you need to go out and read it now. However, if you have a loved one who ventures into the mountains this is the book I would recommend most so that you might better understand your loved one. Beyond the Mountain describes the emotional effects of mountaineering, beyond the mountains.

A first fruition of my work!

I'm working on this complex model of half of a ring gear. I've been working on it for several weeks, probably more like months. The last two weeks I've been working on associating the mesh with the geometry which is a problem with bottom-up meshing sometimes. In short, the mesh made up of a finite number of elements is not the same as the geometry that you planned. They may look the same but when you take a closer look you will see slightly off angles in the range of .1 or .2 degrees away from parallel. There are also curves that are approximated as strait lines that you need to associate with the geometry. So you must select Mesh > Associate Mesh with Geometry..., then select the feature (face, edge, etc. ) on the geometry, then select the mesh (using "by angle" instead of "individual" works better but keep the degrees like .3 or something low) then click done and the face or other feature you selected on the mesh is now associated with the geometry.

So I just finished associating the mesh with the geometry on my 400 faces or so and Abaqus successfully wrote out the input file (which I still have to edit so that if actually runs)! The point is I am hours (perhaps days) away from a truly fantastic carburizing simulation!

Abaqus: Bottom-up mesh example

So swept meshing and structured meshing have failed or aren't available but bottom-up meshing is complicated and hard right? Not as much as you might think. Here is a sample of how I meshed a region of a part using bottom-up meshing technique. This is using Abaqus version 6.7 and I'm skipping the parts about seeding, partitioning, and element type that you have to do to make a mesh. Be sure you seed the region before you mesh it or it will not mesh.

Step 1: Select Mesh > Controls... > Hex (in this case it could be something else but hex looks the most professional) > Bottom-up. Then you select the region (partition, cell) of the part you wish to mesh with bottom-up technique.

Step 2: Click on Mesh > Create Bottom-Up Mesh... Then select the cell (region, partition) that you just gave mesh controls to. The "Create Bottom-Up Mesh" box will appear.

Step 3: Select the Source side. Click "Done" when you have selected the source side. This is the side where the mesh will be created in two dimensions, essentially the bottom of the part, so that the mesh can be swept through the volume.

Step 4: Then select at least one connecting side in this example I choose five connecting sides. The more sides you have the more structured the mesh will be. When you have selected the side(s) click "Done". In some cases you have have to specify a Target side but in general is is not necessary.

Step 5: Click "Apply" in the "Create Bottom-Up Mesh" box and you are done! So that you know the details this mesh had 2304 elements, with 0 analysis errors and 48 analysis warnings. (That means it's pretty good.)

If you have any questions just ask.

If I helped you solve your problem consider how cheap my consulting services are and help me pay the rent: