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...
Technology has sure come a long, long way. As I am sure all of you know, Disney has been a technology innovator in the entertainment industry for nearly a century. The gee-whiz things Disney does has helped inspire many like myself to pursue technology careers.
Once again Disney has used technology to create a "Wow!" experience. I am talking about the new Flight of Passage ride at Disney World in Florida. I visited there a few weeks ago on opening weekend of the new Pandora - World of Avatar land at Disney's Animal Kingdom park. The new land and this ride in particular are based on the top grossing movie of all time - Avatar. This new ride ("attraction" in Disney parlance) is unlike anything I have ever experienced. I got to ride it twice on this trip. This ride simulates a wild ride on the back of flying banshee like those found in the Avatar movie. The Na'vi word for the banshee is Ikran.
As tech support engineers, we sometimes receive questions from users confused about what control valve characteristic curve (inherent or installed) they are inputting into AFT Fathom, AFT Arrow, or AFT Impulse. The inherent control valve characteristic curve plots the valve open percent versus the percent of maximum Cv. This curve is true regardless of the system effects on the valve. The installed control valve characteristic curve plots the valve open percent versus the flow through the valve, and this plot is dependent on the conditions specific to the system. For example, if the control valve flow setpoint is fixed at 250...
It was sometime around 1988 and it was pitch dark outside. I and some of my aerospace colleagues from work were driving in a car caravan from San Diego to Edwards Air Force Base at the ungodly hour of 3AM. The Space Shuttle Discovery was scheduled to land that morning and we wanted to see it.
I had to laugh when I read this article in last week's edition of Businessweek "Big Oil’s Rejection of Silicon Valley Is Finally Coming to End". Who would have thought oil companies were so backwards? I bet they still use sliderulers too! Here is one of the opening quotes:
This past week I and Jeff Olsen, AFT’s V.P. of Technology, attended the annual conference of the Hydraulic Institute. The Hydraulic Institute (HI) was founded in 1917 and is America’s premiere pump organization. At this year’s meeting HI held a centennial celebration.
Pulsation in fluid systems...Is it steady-state or is it transient? Well, it is both. Kind of. Pulsation causes periodic transients that are regular in nature and thus considered steady-state. It can be called "steady-state pulsation".
I am not a political commentator. But anyone not living in a cave has to admit that the past year of American politics was just plain wacky. For those of you for whom English is not your first language, "wacky" is a word that basically means (by my personal definition) "strange, highly unusual and a bit crazy". Which also applies to Donald Trump.