Vibration forcing function help

iamkratos

Hello PF users:

I am looking to perform a fatigue and fracture analysis of a machine component subjected to a 2D vibration forcing function. I was hoping that it could be done on ANSYS 12 because I have license to use it but looks like the pre-processing could get very complicated. (I have no idea how to get started) Is it simpler in matlab? Can the whole problem be defined and solved in matlab and the post processing be done in ANSYS?

I am a undergraduate senior mech engineering student venturing into new territory so I would really appreciate any inputs on this.

Thank you.