AFT Blog

While thinking in terms of pressure is often intuitive for engineers, thinking in terms of head can be more challenging. You may be surprised by the number of cases and questions that come to the support team here at AFT about the basic definition of head, and how it relates to hydraulic modeling. Let's get back to the basics with how head is defin...

In AFT Fathom and AFT Impulse, it is possible to model a submerged pump where a short and possibly frictionless suction pipe for the pump’s inlet does not need to be modeled.  When modeling a submerged pump, there are two options available for specifying the system inlet boundary condition at the pump suction.  As shown in Figure 1 below, the Submerged Pump’s Suction Pressure can either be specified as “Head (HGL)” or “Pressure”.   Modeling a submerged pump is not the only time where the “Head (HGL)” or “Pressure” choices will arise.  If an Exit Valve (i.e., a valve that discharges...