AFT Blog

AFT Impulse 5 was released today and offers a plethora of new features sure to keep waterhammer engineers more productive than ever - and help them build even safer piping systems. How did AFT Impulse get to where it is today?

The Los Angeles Aqueduct conveys water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains to the city of Los Angeles. The system provides 80% of the water to Los Angeles. Part of the aqueduct system travels through the 5.5 mile (9 km) Elizabeth Tunnel. The San Andreas fault cuts across the tunnel and a major earthquake at this location has the potential to cut off this water supply to the city for over a year.

Well, it turns out lots of people. My first experience with "funny fluids" was in graduate school. One of my fluids professors had recently completed his doctoral thesis on funny fluids also known as non-Newtonian fluids. I got to see some of his graduate students do some crazy experiments with polymer additives to otherwise boring Newtonian fluids.

We are excited about all the new features coming in our AFT Impulse 5 waterhammer and surge modeling software. We plan to release this much anticipated new version before the end of the year.

Many of our customers find it interesting that the foundational code developers at AFT are former rocket engineers. Jeff Olsen and I wrote the bulk of AFT Fathom™, AFT Arrow™, and AFT Impulse™ from 1993-2003. Jeff is currently AFT's Vice President of Technology. We both hold B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering.