Analysis & Design
Our core work revolves around product design and development. We use our Fluids Engineering & CFD expertise to help clients develop products cost-effectively and in short time-scales. We also help to reduce risks in product development and hence improve product quality. Our Analysis and Design work normally fits into one of four categories of increasing complexity:
Product Technical Assessment
We use CFD and other techniques to assess or benchmark product performance at a single operating condition. We will often benchmark our work against available experimental/physical data.
This is normally the first stage of a work programme and acts both as a baseline for later work and also to build confidence in the reliability of the analysis methodology. The information gained from the analysis is also used to form an understanding of the governing fluid flows. Quite often we are able to use this information to develop design modifications aimed at improving performance.
[Links to case study examples]
Product Performance Assessment
The performance of the product is assessed over a range of operating conditions or for a range of input parameters in order to build a picture of overall product performance. This type of work aims to form a fuller understanding of product performance over a wide range of conditions and is used to characterise the product.
Often this work is conducted in the form of sensitivity studies to key parameters in order to reduce risk ie conducting an assessment of sensitivity of performance to manufacturing tolerances.
[Links to case study examples]
Design Optimisation
The information obtained in the benchmark analysis is used to develop and recommend design modifications that are implemented and assessed using CFD and other Fluids Engineering techniques. The product design is iterated in this way and the performance improvement is assessed and compared to that of the original design.
This work is necessarily iterative and we work closely with our clients in order to understand their constraints and hence develop designs that are practical and not “academic”.
[Links to case study examples]
Full System Modelling
Once we have formed an understanding of a fluid system we can often reduce the complexity of the model by extracting the core fluid processes that drive the system. We embed these processes within a design tool and deliver this to the client. This enables the client to undertake design optimisation studies independently. Whilst the tool is not an absolute predictive tool, in our experience these types of tools can be used successfully for trend analysis.
In some sense, we work ourselves out of the project. This is fine by us, as we are happy to show clients how they can undertake the bread and butter work themselves and hope to be called back for the next project.
[Links to case study examples]
