October 23, 2007
AFT Impulse 4.0 Released
We're pleased to announce the release of AFT Impulse 4.0. With the release of this new version the class leading waterhammer/surge analysis tool becomes even more powerul and easier to use.
Some of the many new features and capabilities include:
- Enhanced global editing
- Calculation and export of pipe forces resulting from hydraulic transients
- Generate a CAESAR II force file
- Batch runs across scenarios
...and more. Additional information, a list of new features, brochures and working demos will be found here.
We're in the process of assembling and shipping upgrade packages for all AFT Impulse licenses with current support, so, if your AFT Impulse Support, Upgrade & Maintenance is current, you should be receiving this package within the next couple of weeks.
If you're support is not current and you would like to receive the upgrade, please contact us about reinstating your AFT Impulse Support, Upgrade & Maintenance.
Training Activities Around the World
AFT will be conducting two pipe flow modeling seminars in South Africa next month. Hosted by AFT's distributor, Chempute, the first seminar will cover incompressible and transient flow modeling using AFT Fathom and AFT Impulse and will be held November 7-9 in Capetown. The second will cover incompressible, compressible and transient flow modeling using AFT Fathom, AFT Arrow and AFT Impulse and will be held November 12-15 in Johannesburg.
The Capetown seminar is fully booked but there are limited seats available for the Johannesburg seminar. Contact Helen Rube ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) at Chempute for bookings.
Oak Ridge Spallation Neutron Source Sets Record
The Associated Press reported that the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source facility at Oak Ridge, TN, has established a new mark as the world's most powerful accelerator-based source of neutrons for scientific research.
SNS's neutron beam reached 183 kilowatts on Aug. 11, surpassing the 163-kilowatt record held by the ISIS facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. According to AP, Oak Ridge officials said their accelerator is designed to produce up to 10 times more neutrons than now.
Neutron scattering, discovered at Oak Ridge in the 1940s, is an important tool for studying how materials are made so that they can be improved upon. Oak Ridge Lab Director Thom Mason compared the SNS to a "very fancy microscope for seeing how atoms are put together, one at a time, in order to make some material that has some desired property. It might be a protein. It might be some magnetic material.". To do that, "you need a very bright source in order to see fine details. The power level that we operate at tells us how bright our light bulb is."
So why does the AFT Pipeline care about this? Well, besides simply being a fascinating science story, AFT Impulse was used to model transient flow in the liquid mercury loop used as the neutron source. With a specific gravity of more than 10, fluid inertia effects are an order of magnitude greater than most piping systems with a comensurate increase in the potential for transient problems. UT Battelle modeled the mercury loop in AFT Impulse to develop a design that successfully avoids waterhammer and surge problems.
Tip of the Month Using Groups
Groups of pipes and junction can be named for later recall. This is done using the Group Tools on the Edit menu. Groups may have subgroups, and pipes and junctions may be members of multiple groups.
To create a group select the pipes and junctions you want in the group, then select Edit/Groups...Create. Specify a name for the group, click OK and the Group Manager will be displayed showing the pipes and junctions in the group. Group Manager can also be used to add or remove pipes and junctions from an existing group, rename a group or delete a group.
After you've created a goup you can easily select it by going to Edit/Groups/Select...then select the group by name.
Group selection appears through out AFT software; in Output Control/Display Pipes & Junctions, Select Graph Data/Profile Along a Flow Path, and Global Edit as examples, and is a great way to speeding the selection of objects.