Sure thing burrman,

There is a free fea program called Z88, that's the best of the free stuff. Caculix is a more capable free FEA program but not easy to use. I think there is hope for Z88 once it develops a little more. You need to be able to do a prestressed modal analysis for propellers. As well as linear static analysis. Z88 only does linear static stress analysis right now. At present, I am trying to come up with a reasonable process flow for anyone using PROP_DESIGN. I have been retired for awhile now, so I no longer have access to all the expensive toys (eh um, I mean serious engineering tools). I do know from my research that SolidWorks Simulation is the lowest cost and most capable program for this application. If you have a seat of that software, I too would love to see some downstream analysis. Currently I'm limited to free or open source alternatives. So I'm keeping and eye on Z88. Scan & Solve for Rhino is interesting but limited to linear static stress of one part. Also, they use a mesh free solution, which should interest you. So no super huge models to run. You don't mesh it at all. Supposedly it compares well to your typical FEA program. But they are a long way from having prestress modal analysis. If you haven't heard of the Intel MIC architecture check it out. That will really make FEA fly. We already have the capability for a lot of memory in a pc which is good to keep the solution in core. If it has to go out of core we now have SSDs as well. So you can build a great FEA machine for 5 to 10k. The price seems to always stay the same but every couple of years the performance goes up. So you can solve larger and larger models or the same model faster.