Industrial Machinery Archives

Mixing tank CFD simulation webinar

Looking for an industrial equipment to show fluid flow and heat transfer simulations in a very visual way? Then a mixing tank seems to be an ideal choice. It is because motion and multiphase are all part of these machines' daily job. Also because we can demonstrate these two interesting software features at the same time. This case study presents the recording of a mixing tank CFD simulation webin...
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Hand Calculation vs. Simulation: Motion Generated by External and Flow Induced Forces

Once the technical director of a company that engineers HVAC systems for the built environment asked me, when the time would come for the computer simulations to make traditional engineering calculations and design methods completely outdated? As far as I see it, computer simulations and engineering experience should walk hand-in-hand. More to that, I think simulations will not make fast hand calc...
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Improved Smoke Extraction in one of the Largest Cylinder Head Foundries in Central Europe | Part 2.

CFD project testimonials from a range of industries

In the previous part I showed how we made the smoke extraction CFD modelling of the original system of the casting machine. That machine produced many hundreds of cylinder head castings in a shift. In that simulation, which represented the first step of the development project, we created the characteristic, time dependent pattern of smoke generation and validated against real life operation of th...
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Improved Smoke Extraction in one of the Largest Cylinder Head Foundries in Central Europe | Part 1.

We have already published a case study of the CFD simulation of propagation of airborne pollutants, in which we investigated spreading of carbon dioxide in a chemical plant. Emitting CO2 was part of the technology and happened 50m above ground level. During the operation of industrial plants machinery sometimes release unwanted substances much closer to the operators handling them. This is the fir...
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Cell Development for a Centrifugal Partition Chromatography Machine

I surely said this before but if you are so fortunate to do fluid dynamics simulations as your profession you can always learn something new. Controlled cooling of cylinder head castings after solidification? Sounds cool! Simulation of wall erosion in a glass melting furnace? Exciting! Simulation of 2-phase flow within a Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC) machine and design of a new cell s...
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Improved Cleaning of Machined Cylinder Head Castings | Part 2.

Cleaning of Machined Automotive Castings

In the previous part I wrote about how effective and flexible meshing had been with SC/Tetra when simulating many extraction head versions for the cylinder head cleaning project. When I wanted to analyse a new extraction head I only had to change and remesh that specific part and attach it to the main mesh again and push GO button. Since the whole simulation domain contained 11 million elements...
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Improved Cleaning of Machined Cylinder Head Castings | Part 1.

The simulation of metal chip removal with compressed air carried out successfully in 2013 continued in 2014 with new challenges. The results of simulations made in 2013 have been producing profit for the engine manufacturer in every single second of production time since then. In this new phase of the project cleaning performance was further improved. But what kind of new challenges could come aft...
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Riding the Waves: Free Surface and Floating Motion Simulation

CFD simulation of a wooden block floating on water

Sure a Caribbean cruiser is big enough but there are bigger ships in the gas and oil drilling industry. Many of them are tankers but floating refineries are also constructed. I got in touch with one of the latter because of a project and I had the chance to commit a few simulations on a 355m long, 58m wide giant having the daught of a mid sized office block (21 metres). This article can't say a wo...
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Cleaning Machined Automotive Parts with High-pressure Air

I am definite that the automotive parts cleaning CFD analysis this application example was written about has been the greatest challenge I have faced so far in my professional life as a CFD engineer. It was about the CFD simulation of the cleaning process of cylinder head castings with high pressure air. What is so challenging in that you may ask? Everithing. Let me describe. The situation – of...
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PAZFLOR Project: Top Urgent and Top Secret

PAZFLOR project seawater intake line simulation

It was on a hot day in July 2008 when at 10:42pm I got the first message with the subject "Top urgent CFD simulation required". Let me tell you a five day long story of competing against time and a sales person that handled facts rather flexibly. It was many years ago when we were assigned to determine the pressure loss of two seawater suction lines. The flexible hoses were 100 meters long each...
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