a method , a software product and a system for distinguishing effects due to bifurcation from effects due to design variable changes in finite element analysis is disclosed . according to one aspect of the invention , 1 ) a plurality of design experiments is analyzed with finite element analysis software ; 2 ) a metamodel is constructed from the fea responses using the least squares fitting technique ; 3 ) any fea response that is not predicted by the metamodel is classified as outlier , which is the high likelihood candidate for bifurcation ; and 4 ) verification of the bifurcation is then to be confirmed . the method is implemented in a design and probabilistic analysis software product .