AFT Blog

AFT Fathom can EASILY size valves AND orifice plates with a SINGLE Control Valve junction!  There is no need to perform strenuous hand calculations to determine a valve Cv or an orifice diameter.  Just specify the system boundary conditions, pipe input properties, and the desired flow rate (or pressure) and AFT Fathom will calculate the Cv, K factor, and equivalent orifice diameter/area for you all at once! Figure 1 illustrates a control valve junction at the location of a valve or an orifice plate.  For known flow, use a Flow Control Valve (FCV).  For known upstream pressure, use a Pressure Sustaining...

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. Funny, non-Newtonian fluids are often broken into two categories:  Homogeneous fluids which encompasses non-settling slurries where the fluid and solids behave in an aggregate, homogeneous manner Heterogeneous fluids which encompasses settling slurries where the fluid and solids behave somewhat independently The applications where non-Newtonian fluid...

AFT Arrow uses Newton iteration to find a simultaneous solution for all junction pressures. Well, maybe not all junctions. When “Use Exhaustive Tolerance Criteria” is NOT selected, AFT Arrow will only check junction pressures that find their way into the solution matrix. The AFT Arrow solver builds a matrix of equations based on the number of flow splits in the model. Each flow split must have a common pressure that is consistent with the flow and pressure drop in all of the connected pipes. Finding the right pressure for each flow split can become rather tricky. To find the pressure using...

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. Want to know what new features are coming? Read on!                       Waterhammer Modeling of Slurry Pipe Flow AFT Impulse 5 will offer a new add-on SSL module for modeling slurry flow in piping systems. Why is this important? The AFT Impulse 5 SSL module will offer the first commercially available waterhammer modeling of settling slurry piping systems....

Denver is now ranked No. 4 worldwide in a survey of "up-and-coming' energy cities for oil and gas professionals, according to industry website Rigzone.com.  Denver was the only U.S. city to make the list.  As expected - Dubia, Calgary and Rio de Janeiro were the top three. Surprised? Don't be.  Even though Houston is considered the oil and gas capital of the world, some prefer to live and work in the mile high city, which has access to the Rocky Mountains, beautiful weather and yes, the home of the Denver Broncos. Not only does Denver have a strong engineering community concentrated...

With AFT products , the Scenario Manager is an incredibly powerful feature that allows one to model several different cases in only one model file.  This includes different operating conditions, multiple pump configurations, different piping, system expansions, etc.  The list of different cases to model is essentially endless! Now, what if you have a single system and you would like to quickly model several cases where perhaps only a few parameters are changing?  You can start by building a single system on the Workspace.  Then you can use the “Duplicate Special” feature in the Edit menu to duplicate the entire system...

Recently Steve Ballmer announced that he would step down as CEO of Microsoft sometime in the next 12 months. He has had mixed success with both fans and critics over the past 13 years. We depend on Microsoft Windows and development platforms for our business here at Applied Flow Technology. This led me to think about our company, its evolution and direction. Trey Walters has guided the growth of AFT from its inception as company run from his basement to a recognized leader around the world for delivering high-quality applications, technical support and consulting services in the area of flow analysis....