CFD Consultancy

Computational Fluid Dynamics Consultancy

CFD Consultancy is at the core of who we are at our Singapore Office at BroadTech Engineering.
Through the use of advanced engineering simulation techniques that have been used heavily by BroadTech Engineering since the early days, we are able to provide reliable CFD services to solve a wide range of Fluid flow engineering challenges which encompasses liquid flow, thermal heat transfer, and chemical reaction.
Our specialized strength is in the development and application of numerical simulation methods for CFD Flow analysis in our CFD consulting services.

Leveraging on the most advanced CFD flow modeling approaches and CFD design methodology, our team of highly experienced CFD consultants in our CFD company has the ability to provide in-depth engineering analysis of complex fluid flow behaviors in our CFD consulting.
This encompasses the use of the latest CFD simulation software to carry out CFD fluid flow analysis into the highly realistic fluid flow characteristic patterns, like fluid speed, pressure, turbulence, thermal temperature, and species concentration for internal or external flows.

Featured CFD Consultancy Case Studies

CFD consultancy

CFD Analysis of Centrifugal Blower (radial blades) Design

Centrifugal Blower (radial blades) design, customization, manufacturing, balancing and testing as per requirements of a patented Air-Conditioner.
Simulation Objective: The static pressure of Axial fans used earlier was not enough to overcome the entire resistance, hence two-fans were required. The objective was to replace the entire fans by a single centrifugal fan without increasing the cost.

Methodology: Firstly the working, design, and handling of the centrifugal fans were studied from the ‘centrifugal fans handbook’. After a literature review, it is learned that radial blades are self-cleaning blades and can handle dirty (dusty) air as well. Hence, no maintenance is required.

As per the theoretical calculations and computational fluid dynamics simulation, centrifugal fans were designed for 4″ water gauge pressure. Creo-Parametric 3.0 was used for CAD, ICEMCFD was used for meshing, OpenFOAM and Ansys-Fluent was used for analysis

Later, manufacturing was done using Laser-Cutting and Sheet metal operations. Traditional methods were using for balancing the rotor

Outcome and Conclusion:

1. Flow losses were analyzed at various bends and heat-exchangers.

2. It was learned that, if ‘static pressure’ is converted to ‘velocity pressure’ there are no or negligible losses, while for vice-versa, nearly 50% of the energy is lost in turbulence.

3. Overall machine design is improved, while, using ‘Laser Cutting’ and ‘sheet metal operations’ the overall cost maintained within 10% of the original cost (with axial fans) without compromising the quality.

CFD Study of the Effects of Boundary Layer Suction on Transonic Airfoil Performance

These Aerodynamics and numerical simulations consultancy project involved investigating the effects of boundary layer suction on the aerodynamic characteristics of the supercritical airfoil. This was done using the commercial engineering software ANSYS CFX.

Through this client project, we obtained positive results. The findings from the computational fluid dynamics analysis were presented at the ASME IMECE 2017 Conference and subsequently published in Proceedings of the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition.

The central objective of the CFD consultancy project was the computational study of the Supercritical airfoil, focusing on its aerodynamics characteristics at Reynolds number of 35×106, inlet Mach number of 0.72 and angle of attack of 2 and 10 degrees, which are the most common operational conditions of transonic wings with this type of airfoil.

The effect of suction in two locations with three suction inflow-stream velocities was analyzed for the low and high angle of attack. The numerical simulation of the computational fluid analysis was conducted using the finite volume method on platform ANSYS CFXTM and solving the Reynolds- Averaged Navier-Stokes, mass conservation, and energy equations. Mesh verification and model validation (k- ω and Shear Stress Transport (SST) and the comparison of results with NASA experimental data to determine the best among the treated models) are conducted.

In order to determine their control effectiveness when compared to standard closed-contour airfoil, 2 mechanical suction slots were placed along the airfoil contour. Suction slots were placed at the leading edge and in the middle of the upper chamber of the airfoil with inflow in the normal direction to the surface. The slot length was 2.5 % of the chord with inflow velocity of 30%, 40% and 50% of free-stream velocity. Effects of suction slots were assessed in the wake region and by computing the resulting lift-to-drag ratio. To sum up, it was observed from the fluid flow simulation that active control has proven to be ineffective at low angles of attack, but very effective to increase airfoil performance at high angles of attack.

Overview

1. FEA Consulting

2. CFD Consulting

3. LS-DYNA Consulting

About Us

BroadTech Engineering is a Leading Engineering Simulation and Numerical Modelling Consultancy in Singapore.
We Help Our Clients Gain Valuable Insights to Optimize and Improve Product Performance, Reliability, and Efficiency.

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1. Powerful Simulation Software Tools

2. Simulation Consultants with Extensive Research & Professional Experience

3. Simulation projects Completed in a Timely and Cost-effective Manner

4. Proven Track Record

5. Affordable

6. Full Knowledge Transfer

Features & Benefits of Engaging a CFD Consultancy

Engaging the professional services of a CFD consultancy enables design engineers to explore and accurately validate more product concepts during the early design development phase.

Many complex interactions of different factors come into play in determining the fluid flow performance of each actual application design.
Leveraging on the power of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Fluid dynamics simulation gives engineering teams in our CFD consultancy the ability to accurately model and simulate the performance of the product under a wide array of operating conditions in a virtual environment.
This fluid dynamic analysis helps to give engineers an in-depth understanding of the pressure, flow and thermal characteristics of their product in order to ensure performance and reliability.

1. Accurate Measurement of Fluid Flow performance & Reliability

This capability to test and validate design ideas with computational fluid analysis early in the development process allows engineers to be better equipped with useful technical engineering insights into key fluid flow performance indicators.
Flow performance indicators include examples such as

Flow Analysis

1. Prediction of fluid flow rates & Flow Velocity

2. Occurrences of flow turbulence (if any)

3. Occurrence of Recirculation during Fluid Flow distribution

Pressure Analysis

1. Drop in fluid flow pressure

2. Stagnation of pressure

3. Regions of low pressure which cause Cavitation

4. Mechanical chatter

FEM Thermal Analysis

1. Temperature distribution

2. Heat transfer

3. Multi-fluid heat exchange

4. Thermal stacking

2. Accelerate Engineering Development with CFD Flow Analysis

This allows engineering development teams to make better engineering decisions and have higher confidence in the fluid flow performance of their product designs.
In addition, CFD flow engineering simulation allows engineers to strike a winning balance between conflict demands such as Product cost pressures, demands for Performance durability, and all to be achieved while working with a limited project time available.

Common industrial Products where fluid flow performance is critical includes

● Pumps

● Valves

● Heat exchangers

● Nozzles

● Measuring devices

● Choke valve

Other Featured CFD Case Studies

CFD-based Optimization of Wind Farm Layout

Wind energy technology industry is steadily improving every year, and it is expected that in the near future a major part of the energy supply will be generated from wind. However, some problems related to wind energy efficiency still exist, like the wake that forms behind a wind turbine, which decreases total energy production.
During a three-month CFD consultancy project, BroadTech Engineering was tasked to model the two types of wind turbines and numerically analyze them. The main objective was to identify the effect of the hub (nose cone) on wake produced after turbine. Geometry was created in Solidworks and numerical simulation conducted in ANSYS Fluent.
The simulation was transient with rotating the parts. The structural mesh was created in the computational domain. Through this CFD consulting engagement, it involved the various aspect of simulation (ANSYS Workbench, FLUENT), and MATLAB programming (especially in optimization).

Numerical Simulation Investigation of Turbulence in Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms

Objective – The chief objective was to investigate the complex pulsatile flow field in an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and to study the underlying mechanism of transition to turbulence.

Approach: Various 3D geometries of axisymmetric AAA were created and meshed. Since no turbulence models were used, the mesh (structured) was created in accordance with the Taylor microscale to be able to capture most of the relevant flow scales. Unsteady simulations in ANSYS Fluent were done. The pulsatile nature of blood flow was given as inlet velocity through a user-defined function (UDF). To have complete control over the simulation data, post-processing was done in MATLAB.

Outcome: The flow transitions in an AAA due to the breakdown of a vortex ring which is shed once every cycle. The breakdown occurs chiefly due to two factors – the onset of an azimuthal instability on the ring and the interaction of the thus unstable ring with the flow field remnants from the previous cycle. Further, a particle residence time was also done to see regions where blood gets stuck in a recirculation zone as such regions would be deprived of fresh blood and thus cause degradation of the surrounding arterial tissue thereby posing a higher risk of AAA rupture.

Asphaltenes Particles Deposition (fouling) Study in Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger

In general, shell and tube heat exchanger design assume that fluid flow through the bundle of tubes is evenly distributed. Practical experience has shown that this is not always true and the consequences of maldistribution in terms of poor performance and increased fouling are often severe. Uneven distribution of fluid flow means areas of low velocity and vortex formation within the tube bundle leading to areas of ineffective heat transfer and increased risk of tube side fouling.It is believed that asphaltenes particles precipitation and deposition is the major cause of heat exchanger fouling.

The CFD project aims to simulate the deposition of asphaltenes from crude oil in a multi-pass shell and tube heat exchanger through Discrete-Phase Modeling (DPM) CFD simulations. In an effort to understand the effect of various forces on the rate of deposition of asphaltenes, forces such as gravity, drag, Saffman lift, thermophoretic and stochastic collision are applied on the asphaltenes particles to predict the mass deposition rate The effects of bulk velocity and temperature difference between the bulk and the wall on asphaltenes deposition are investigated.

From the results, it is observed that the asphaltenes particles are deposited mainly under low-velocity conditions and in low-velocity regions in the heat exchanger. The asphaltenes particles velocity is observed to reduce in the rear header before the particles enter the tube pass-2 leading to form as deposits on the bottom portion of the rear tube sheet. Higher settling velocities at low fluid velocities encouraged the fouling. The higher flow velocities and lower temperature gradients reduce the asphaltenes mass deposition on the heat transfer surfaces and as obvious, the pressure-drop increases with increased flow velocities.

CFD Simulations of 2 Phase/3 Phase Separators

3 phase separators allow the separation of smaller oil droplets within confined spaces. These separators use a variety of coalescing media and small diameter cartridges that enhance laminar flow and separation of smaller oil droplets that accumulate on the separator surface for removal.

V-o-F (Volume of Fluid) Multi-phase CFD model has been used to perform the CFD simulations in these separators.

The simulation results were able to track the separation inter-phase between the phases. The volume fraction results are observed and found the separation is effected.

Oxygen Reduction by Steam Inerting

Steam is the most commonly used inerting medium which is less expensive. Steam is widely used as a medium for both fire suppression and inerting. Steam inerting is very helpful in controlling the flame propagation. If the oxygen concentration within the combustible is controlled, a flame cannot propagate. Therefore, a highly efficient method for controlling the flame propagation is inerting. If the oxygen concentrations within the environment are above the explosive limits, then explosions may occur which causes a huge damage to the surroundings and disturbs the safe working conditions.

To overcome these kinds of issues, Computational Fluid Dynamic simulations are performed to control the oxygen levels within the concerned environments by using steam for inerting. We have used the available Species transport model in CFD to mix the necessary gases in the oxygen. The results showed that the mixing of gases is highly recommendable to reduce the levels of oxygen.

Lid-Driven Cavity Flow

Objective – The objective of this project was to get familiar with a CFD software such as ANSYS Fluent.

Approach – 2D, steady-state simulations were done at various Reynolds numbers. The CFD simulation results were verified against the data available in the literature.

Outcome – Flow quantities such as velocity components were found to be in good agreement with the data available in the literature.

Parametric Flow Analysis of Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) Valve

The main objective of CFD simulation was to check the performance of valve for different conditions. Geometry was idealized and prepared with Catia V5, the parametric function was used in Catia for valve lift. Meshing was done using Ansys Meshing in workbench, CFX pre with was used to step the parametric conditions. Post processing was done in CFD Post. Simulation results with all parameters were taken down in excel sheet and different graphs plotted to see the performance of EGR valve.

Design & Numerical Simulation of a wear-free Fluidic Switch

The Design and Numerical Simulation of a wear-free fluidic switch based on the Coanda effect for a hydraulic DTH (down the hole) hammer prototype. The traditional DTH hammers have around 40-45 parts within the hammer casing and the fluid flows through the complete system.

One of the major drawbacks of such a system is that if one of the parts is damaged within the hammer then the complete assembly has to be dismantled and the part has to be replaced. This accounts for additional costs. The main objective of using the fluidic switch based on the Coanda effect was the omission of a lot of moving parts and assemblies within the hammer casing. The only moving part was the piston within the cylinder which reciprocated, driven by the pressure of the fluid coming out through the fluidic switch connected to the piston-cylinder arrangement. The conclusion of the above simulations provided an optimum fluidic switch that could be inserted into a hammer prototype in order to achieve a hassle free drilling procedure.

Analysis of Separated Fluid flow around a Semi-blunt 3D Object, Ahmed body (AB)

The flow is modeled using four turbulence models: k-epsilon, k-w, Shear Stress Transport (SST) and k-epsilon-EARSM, respectively. The study was undertaken at free stream velocity of 40 m/s and ambient conditions for which the flow is considered as incompressible and in statistically steady state conditions. The numerical simulation was conducted using the finite volume method on ANSYS CFXTM and solving the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations.

By applying appropriate boundary conditions, values of drag force, drag coefficient, and boundary velocity profile were determined. The hexahedral box corresponding to AB has an inclined rear surface and a rounded front face. Flow separation strongly depended on rear slant angle, which is 25 degrees for AB.
Rigorous mesh verification and turbulence model validation are conducted. The comparison between numerical results using different turbulence models and experimental data remarks the strong anisotropy governing the physics of forces acting on AB.

CFD Simulation of Thermal heat transfer in a Plate Heat Exchanger

Objective – The goal of this internship was to carry out a CFD simulation of the conjugate heat transfer process in a compact brazed plate heat exchanger (PHE).

Approach – A 3D model of the actual PHE was made in SolidWorks and meshed (unstructured). Due to computational limitations, periodic boundary conditions were used to represent all the channels of the PHE through two channels. For single phase heat transfer, steady-state simulations were done in ANSYS Fluent. Multiphase unsteady simulations were also done to simulate phase change.

Outcome – Single-phase heat transfer results were in good agreement with the experimental and analytical results thereby validating the approach and the PHE model. Regarding multiphase simulations, due to lack of data regarding the concerned PHE and models available in the current literature, a detailed validation could not be done. Instead, a detailed literature review and future recommendation were given to the company. However, a later study within the same company confirmed that the models available in ANSYS Fluent are insufficient to model phase change in PHEs and sufficient research is required to not only understand the physics involved in phase change heat transfer but to also develop computational models.

Flow Assurance in Wash Water Distribution Piping

CFD Simulations

Wash water is pumped through a distribution manifold with four outlets to the NHT product condensers. The required wash water is fed through a manifold with four outlet branches. Since the branches are at different distances from the manifold water inlet, the flow rates through all the branches are not the same due to different pressure drops. The plant has experienced corrosion problems in one of the condensers to which the wash water is fed through the outlet farther from the inlet.

In an effort to determine the flow distribution, a Computational Fluid Dynamics approach is used

in this study. The wash water distribution manifold is modeled in the CFD platform and simulated. The overall objective of the project is to predict the water flow rate in the four outlet pipes of the wash water distribution manifold of NHT product condensers and to recommend suitable measures to ensure equal flow distribution.

The flow field is simulated and observed uneven and non-uniformity flow rates in the outlets. Necessary modifications were suggested and the CFD simulations were performed with the modifications suggested. With the suggested modifications, the flow rates are observed to be equal.

(This is one of my successful industrial projects. Hence, the suggested modifications and refinery name are kept as confidential)

Under Hood Analysis of Passenger Car

The main objective of simulation was to find out the suitable cooling system (Radiator) for passenger car and to find out the temperature distribution and hotspot on the component which is critical to high temperatures. The meshing of CFD consultancy project was done using Ansys ICEM CFD software and simulation was carried out Ansys Fluent software.Simulations results show air flow patterns under the hood was good, cooling was optimal.

CFD Analysis of CAR parking of Buildings and Hotels

The main purpose of the simulation is done to predict the CO concentration and time required to remove smoke from the car parking. CFD analysis consists of an analysis of Jet fans used in car parking and simulation of smoke produced during normal working and also if the car is set to fire. Two simulations were done, one for fire mode and other Co predication mode. The analysis shows that jet fans were placed correctly to remove the smoke and Co concentration at the given time. Software used for simulation was Ansys Fluent and ICEM CFD.

Simulation of an internal flow through a Cylindrical Pipe with a Circular obstacle

Design and numerical simulation of an internal flow through a cylindrical pipe with a circular obstacle obstructing the fluid flow. The main objective of the analysis was to study the velocity and the pressure distribution of the flow across the obstacle at different Reynold’s number.
It was observed that at low Reynold’s numbers, the flow pattern was symmetrical and the separation of the flow over the sphere is more towards the upstream. As Reynold’s number is increased, the flow starts becoming turbulent and the separation of the flow starts moving downstream towards the equator of the sphere.

CFD Flow Modeling

In addition, we have the technical experience and CFD analysis software capabilities to create CFD model and simulation of various fluid dynamics flow scenarios, such as

1. Multiphase Liquid flow

2. Particle tracking

3. Modeling of Particulate during Evaporation Phase change

4. Thermal Mixing

5. Species Mixing

6. Thermal heat transfer Modeling due to various methods such as Combustion, Convection, Conduction, and Radiation.

7. Combustion Modeling

8. HVAC System Modeling

CFD Software

At BroadTech Engineering, we utilize a broad array of CFD simulation software tools to solve difficult engineering problems in the most cost-effective and efficient way.
Our suite of CFD simulation capabilities include several

1. Powerful 3D Navier-Stokes solvers

2. Potential flow solver

3. 1D Network solver, along with boundary layer and separation prediction techniques.

Call Us for a Free Consultation

If you are still interested in learning more about what we as a CFD consultancy can do for you, simply call to contact us today at +6581822236 for a no obligation discussion of your needs.
if you have any queries, our knowledgeable and friendly team will be happy to answer any of your queries and share to you in details the benefits & features of engaging the expertise of a professional CFD consultancy.

Alternatively, for quote request, simply email us your technical specifications & requirements to info@broadtechengineering.com