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...
Applied Flow Technology has been an innovator and industry leader since its founding in 1994. AFT Fathom™ was the first of its kind – a graphical, drag-and-drop platform for modeling pipe system hydraulics.
An excellent new feature of AFT Impulse 5 is that it is possible to estimate the pump inertia, specific speed, and four quadrant data sets directly within AFT Impulse 5! No more need to perform external spreadsheet calculations for these estimates. In addition to that, AFT Impulse 5 can use the entered pump and power/efficiency curve to perform these estimates which makes things much easier and efficient!! First step is to enter pump curve data and generate the curve fits as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Pump Performance Curve from Entered Data Next, click on the "Transient" tab of...
AFT Impulse 5 now includes a second cavitation model option: The Discrete Gas cavity Model (DGCM). So, what is it and how is it different from the existing cavitation model? This article will provide a very high level overview. The method of characteristics (the finite difference basis for 1D transient flow modeling) assumes a constant wave speed for each pipe, from time step to time step. There are, however, many things that would cause a change in wave speed; cavitation being one the most significant. A change in wave speed will have a dramatic effect on the pressure spike that occurs...
AFT Applications have the ability to display the output in different languages. We supply files for French and Spanish with our installation which should be used. Other language files can be created using the language.dat file template. To select a new language select Output Language from the Tool menu and then select the language you would like to use. Once a new language is selected the Output Control will reflect the output parameters in that language. When the model is run and the results will be displayed in the Output tab in the selected language. The Graph Results and Visual Report...
One of my favorite lines from the movie Apollo 13 was when an engineer exclaimed, “Power is everything!”. Nothing happens without power. Power, the rate at which energy is used, underlies everything in modern society.
Trends in energy economics are impacting industries and entire nations. Some recent articles about European chemical production and refining illustrate this.
It is always interesting to see items in the news where our software has played a role. Last week a breakthrough in nuclear research was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF).
You have just finished designing your system and built a model of your system in AFT Fathom and have convinced your team and the client that the system will achieve all the desired pressures, flow rates, and temperatures. The next big question is, “How much will this system cost?” With AFT Fathom, you have the ability to answer that question in great detail! You can easily determine the full cost of pipe materials and system components! Not only that, but you can quickly figure out how much it will cost to install and operate the entire system! You will even be...