AFT Blog

In case you have not noticed, rockets can be really loud. Sound suppression on vertically launched rockets (and the Space Shuttle, back when it was flying) is more important than most of you would think. And for a different reason than most of you would guess.

Every so often I get to talk about my first job which was in the aerospace industry where I first learned about sound suppression systems. Today AFT software is used on several of these systems by our customers in the aerospace industry as well as NASA. 

The flowrate of water used in the sound suppression process is enormous. Which is why they are often called "deluge systems".

This week was not a typical week for me. For the first time in 30 years I found myself in not one, not two, but three university classrooms. Each classroom was in one of Colorado's excellent engineering schools.

I had a chance to come face-to-face with about 140 students in classrooms this week and several professors. A number of positive things came of the week which I will summarize below.

Pikes Peak in Colorado, USA is often called "America's Mountain" and is the most visited mountain in North America and second most visited in the world. Barr Trail is the 13 mile (20 km) hiking trail that leads from Manitou Springs to the top of Pikes Peak. And right next to the Barr Trail trailhead is the famous 100+ year-old Manitou Hydro Plant.

Famous? Why is this tiny 5.5 MW hydroelectric power plant famous?

And how would a fluid systems engineer like myself compare it to other famous dams like the 14,000 MW Itaipu Dam and the 2,000 MW Hoover Dam?

Hurricane Irma ravaged the Caribbean Islands and the state of Florida. Sixteen days prior, Hurricane Harvey ravaged the coastal area of Texas. Weather experts said this was the first time in recorded history that two Category 4 hurricanes made landfall in the United States in the same season. Each hurricane caused billions of dollars in damage and impacted millions of people.

It was an honor to visit our friends in Beijing, China to provide our Channel Partner, AECsoft Engineering Software (AECSOFT), two days of complimentary workshops. During these workshops, attendees had a hands-on experience with AFT Software as well the opportunity to discuss relevant hydraulic topics. Each attendee also received a 15-day free trial license to review topics discussed in the workshop. The first workshop, held August 21-22, hosted 65 attendees from twenty-nine companies. The workshop focused heavily on technical orientation to the AFT software.         The second workshop, held August 24-25, was dedicated exclusively to the biggest state...

There are many (six!) ways to define a pump transient event in AFT Impulse. This gives you great flexibility in creating a model that behaves the way you want it to. One thing true for all pumps is that they must be started at least once. Pump startups often cause significant transient effects on the system so you may wish to model this with AFT Impulse. Even narrowing your pump transient down to a startup, there are still four models left to choose from: Without InertiaStartup With Inertia and No Back Flow or Reverse SpeedStartup With Inertia - Four Quadrant, Known...

Unknown to me, a few weeks ago I was sitting across from a Brazilian hydroelectric engineer on an airplane flying across Brazil. His name was Roberto and he did not speak English. I myself was learning the basic Portuguese phrases but that was the extent of my language skills. I was traveling with my son (an engineering student himself) who was spending the southern winter (i.e., northern summer) working in São Paulo, Brazil. My son had learned to speak Portuguese amazingly well and struck up a conversation with Roberto. That was when he found out Roberto was a civil engineer who used to work in hydroelectric power.