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...
Engineering is a strange profession in many ways. One area of strangeness is what we can legally call ourselves. Or not. In medicine, law, or accounting, you cannot practice the profession without a license. And that typically involves passing an exam. It may be difficult to accomplish, but the process is straightforward. In engineering things are ...
Eductors, also known as jet pumps, are a clever way to pump a liquid without any rotating equipment, motors, shafts, or electricity using only the momentum from a supply fluid. However, these interesting pumps can quickly become confusing especially when trying to define them in AFT Fathom. In this blog we will explore exactly how eductors work and...
Whew! That was a lot of hard work! As of Monday, April 12, 2021, AFT xStream™ is loaded up and ready to go. And to help you simulate things you have only guessed at before. When we engaged Fred Moody a few years ago to teach a short course at AFT that covered compressible gas and steam transients, we were not certain a commercial quality product co...
Have you ever been working on an interesting project where you get into the zone by picking up so much momentum in the work you are doing? But then, all of a sudden you hit a brick wall in your progress and cannot help but feel the pain of all that momentum coming to a screeching halt? You are not alone, in fact, fluids experience something ve...
All of a sudden it seems that everyone is talking about hydrogen - that wonderful, light-weight gas or liquid (see the Apollo mission Saturn rocket and Space Shuttle) which has the unfortunate tendency to explode (see Hindenburg). In my first engineering job, I was fortunate to work with both gaseous hydrogen as well as cryogenic liquid hydrogen. A...
Jack, Ryan, and Sally are piloting a small research vessel on a remote river. While distracted by news of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (successful landing!), their vessel crashes and begins capsizing. After their initial panic, they are dismayed to find the collision has taken out their communications equipment.
In some quick thinking, Jack finds a printed log of ships expected to be nearby. Fortunately, there is a marine zoology expedition about a mile downriver, and our crew just needs to get an SOS out to that ship.
Initially, Jack tries simply yelling for help. Unfortunately, this doesn't do much good - and the explanation why requires some fluid mechanics.
When I was in high school (four decades ago!) I had an awesome physics teacher in my junior year, Mr. Kindred. His class was a key influence in my decision to pursue a career in mechanical engineering. I recall Mr. Kindred discussing the future of fusion power and commenting, as was common at that time, that "fusion power is 20 years away". Well, h...