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When clients approach us to help them resolve their process challenges, we often leverage the advantages offered by physical modeling techniques. To achieve this, we design, manufacture, and construct an appropriately scaled model of their system. Such models allow us to simulate the relevant process conditions and evaluate specific criteria to better understand the root causes of their issues.

Regardless of which scale is used for a laboratory model, each component begins its life in the virtual environment of 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) software, we primarily use SolidWorks. In certain instances, such as when designing pressure vessels or structural components, designs are additionally evaluated using ANSYS Finite Element Analysis (FEA) technique.

Once a design strategy has been established, key geometry features are extracted from existing drawings of clients’ plants or developed from calculations.

Our design engineers then generate parts, assemblies, and sub-assemblies within the virtual space, detailing vessel walls, piping routes, mechanical connections and more.

Paying attention to small details is of key importance. Something as routine as chamfering an edge by just millimeters on a scaled model part, for the sake of safe handling, can have serious implications: the same chamfer scaled back up to the real-world size could equate to a 50-cm feature which should not be there. Such a feature could greatly impact the way fluids might flow around it.

While some parts can be relatively easy to conceptualize in the 3D environment, others can be much more challenging, especially components whose surfaces are not simple geometric shapes, planes, or curves. Amongst the most complex features are the lofted blades of impellers. In such cases our design team uses a combination of surface and solid modeling techniques.

Surface modeling allows us to build the geometry without having to worry about perfect congruence between edges and volumes. The complex shapes are designed from 3D curves and surfaces, which are then trimmed and stitched together to create a solid body.