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...
Yes, tomorrow evening Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will open in theaters here in the USA. I am a huge Star Wars fan and bought tickets back on November 2 for a show this Friday evening, December 20. Just two more days for me! So, who cares? In this season of the pending impeachment of US President Trump, British elections and Brexit, and protes...
At this moment I am on a bullet (i.e., high speed) train from Xi'an to Beijing in China. It is a 4.5 hour trip at speeds of over 325 km/hr (200 mph). So cool! I am very fortunate. Since founding AFT 25 years ago, I have been able to travel the world and visit 30 countries. Along the way, I have made many international friends and have met many engi...
Many users enjoyed my previous blog, "Know Your Pump & System Curves – Part 1" and greatly anticipated the release of Part 2. I'm going to split Part 2 into two separate blogs: Part 2A Brief discussion on why system curves matterPump & System Curves for multi-branched piping systems§How you can have different system curves for the...
Almost every piping system has valves, and an accurate solution requires accurate valve losses. For incompressible systems, this is relatively straightforward. What happens when we introduce the complexities of compressible flow?
Engineers have a tough life. I mean what other profession has to deal with stress, pressure and strain? It sounds like engineers have a lot in common with mental health professionals. If you are a fluids engineer like I am, then strain itself is not enough. What matters is how fast the strain happens (the rate of strain). This affects the viscosity...
When working on a new piping system, there are many factors that must be taken into account: meeting customer demands, following industry standards, and maintaining effective system operation to name just a few. As a busy engineer, it is important to address all of these concerns in the short time frame available to you. AFT's new Automated Network...
I was 20 years old and 18 months away from finishing my formal education. Forever. I was well on my way to being a…structural engineer. Wait, that must be a typo. Structural? Really? Where did the fluids come in? I really liked structural mechanics and that was where I was focused for the first 2.5 years of my mechanical engineering studies. My cla...