AFT Blog
The Opposite of Good Vibrations - Evaluating FIV, AIV, FIP Guidelines from AFT Fathom and AFT Arrow
Learn how to use AFT Fathom and AFT Arrow to help calculate the Likelihood of Failure (LOF) for Flow Induced Vibration (FIV), Acoustic Induced Vibration (AIV), and Flow Induced Pulsation (FIP) in accordance with Energy Institute Guidelines to avoid v...
It's a Pump! It's a Turbine! It's a Pump as Turbine!
Pumps and turbines may serve opposite purposes, but fundamentally, they operate under the same principles. Both pieces of equipment convert between usable work and fluid energy, and both often use an impeller to make the conversion. Differences betwe...
What Is Transient Analysis?
You're tasked to perform a transient analysis of a piping system and it would be really helpful if there was a good software tool out there to help you. Well, you've come to the right place because AFT has great solutions! ...
Know Your Pump & System Curves - Part 3
In the final "Know Your Pump & System Curves" blog series, I am going to discuss the complexities behind pump vs. system curves for systems with pumps in series and parallel configurations. Multiple pumps in series configurations are relatively s...
Digital Twin – Identical or Fraternal?
When I was a child, I was jealous of twins. I thought how cool it would be to have a twin. I had twin cousins a few years older than I was that I saw on a frequent basis. I always got them confused. Which one was Roger, and which one was Ronny? A buz...
That Valve’s Got Character – Applying Pre-defined Characteristic Curves
Valves are often oversimplified during modeling. Understandably, defining a valve with its range of Cv at various open percentages requires much more information than an engineer may have during the initial design phase. However, just like handbook d...
Air compressors, they are a machine that everyone has interacted with in their life time. Whether it is in the garage, at the gas station, or in a manufacturing environment compressed air is everywhere. Compressed air is one of the most widely used utilities out there, but also one of the most expensive utilities out there. The key to is to make su...
As if we all need something else to worry about, right? But I am afraid it is true. The concern stems from how fast steam acoustic waves steepen as they transmit through a system. This steepening causes transient forces on the steam piping much higher than conventional methods predict. When I was beta testing AFT's latest software product, AFT xStr...
AFT Fathom, AFT Arrow, AFT Impulse, and AFT xStream all have a tab in the Pipe Properties window called "Fittings & Losses" which allows users to quickly specify K factors for components within a pipeline such as valves, elbows, and area changes. The Fittings & Losses allow you to simplify your model and avoid workspace clutter by inte...
I love post-apocalyptic movies. My first introduction to the genre may have been the original Planet of the Apes I watched with my father as a young child. Today I will admit to really enjoying The Walking Dead. Most of these shows assert a disaster happened that was often man-made. While Hollywood scares us in an entertaining fashio...
The price of gasoline is at a record high. What is going on? How long will it last? Unlike in recent years, today there are some easily identifiable world events and trends causing this. And refining is a big one. That is the main reason that refining company Valero Energy has the second-best growth among S&P 500 stocks in 2022 (as of May ...
Having some trouble getting your modelling under control? This blog will discuss some tips on how to properly use a control valve in AFT Fathom and how to interpret some common control valve warnings. For simplicity this blog will primarily discuss control valves in the context of AFT Fathom. However, the concepts discussed in this blog also apply ...
Wow, have things changed a lot in the last two months! Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine in February has literally changed the world. Our hearts and prayers go out to the Ukrainian people who are experiencing unimaginable suffering. Tens of thousands of people have died and many more have had their lives upended. Now two months later Sweden and...