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...
A few months ago I attended a CEO forum in Colorado where a big topic on the minds of the 1000 CEOs in attendance was the state and direction of the US and global economy. The keynote speaker Brian Beaulieu began his presentation with this assessment of the economy from TIME magazine:
Wherever I go I see change. China is undergoing massive change in a relatively short period of time which has impacted Western nations both positively and negatively – as well as the rest of the world. China’s growth in manufacturing is impacting Australia in a huge way and driving much of the Australian economy through accessing its abundant natural resources.
In early October, I conducted a 5-day training seminar in Lima, Peru. There were seven different companies represented from Peru and Chile. It is always interesting to see the variety of applications for AFT software and Peru was no exception where many of the engineers are involved in mining operations. Peru is a leading producer of copper, gold, silver, phosphate and potash with over $16 billion in exports in 2009. The engineers at the seminar had a variety of active project responsibilities. These ranged from long transport pipelines, to storage and transfer systems, to refining and process facilities. The course emphasized...
A frequently asked question at our training seminars - usually during a break or over lunch - is how we came up with the name "Fathom". More completely, the product is named AFT Fathom™ and it is considered by many as the world's leading pipe flow modeling software product.
The growing emphasis on sustainable business practices and environmental responsibility has impacted AFT software in several areas. In recent years we have added built-in capabilities to AFT Fathom and AFT Arrow to calculate energy usage and to estimate the cost to operate rotating equipment. This is available on the Analysis menu in the “Cost Settings” window. Using AFT Fathom, TME Energy Services Division developed a model of the chilled water system at the University of Arkansas. The project realized an annual energy savings of 1.9 million KWHr and $67,000 in pumping power and $1,200,000 in annual chiller electrical and gas energy...
As President of AFT, I often hear from our customers about how one of AFT's software products has helped them solve a problem or made their lives easier. Sometimes I'll notice something in the news and think how AFT's products COULD have helped avoid a problem. Every month, I'd like to share these insights with you in hopes that we can all work together to make our pipelines safer and more efficient. Last week I met an AFT Impulse user at a conference and was reminded of how profoundly our products affect the safety of industrial systems. I made a presentation...