Cornell Pump Company is using CFdesign simulation software and HPC modules from Blue Ridge Numerics to improve its full transient system-level simulation and performance curve generation. Cornell design engineers were able to perform a series of transient simulations to develop a complete performance curve, enabling evaluation of a centrifugal pump design in only two hours, down from 200 hours, resulting in a significant reduction in product development time. Similar to the Cornell team, multitasking engineers designing high performance fans, blowers, turbomachinery, and many other products can now benefit from the upgraded Motion Module, allowing for more iterations upfront in the design process.
The significant performance increases the Cornell team experienced using CFdesign will have major implications for development of new pumps. Beyond cutting computer simulation time from weeks to hours, it is expected to reduce the number of pump castings that have to be made for physical testing. Eliminating just one of the physical tests could save the Cornell team as much as three months of development time.
'With much faster running speeds, we will be able to do many more simulation runs in less time,' said Andrew Enterline, design engineer, Cornell Pump Company. 'We'll spend more time designing the product and less time and money in pattern rework, re-pouring castings, and physical development testing, helping us create more optimised product designs from the start.'
In the past, generating a typical pump curve for the Cornell design team required 300 iterations at 1.5 iterations per hour to evaluate a single design, so the team explored options to speed up the development cycle. New rotational algorithms for transient rotating modelling included in the latest release of the Motion Module help speed up simulation time by 20x on a standard desktop computer, allowing Cornell and other design teams to more quickly and accurately evaluate performance curves. In addition, the Motion Module can be combined with the new CFdesign HPC Module to provide an overall 100x speed up. Cornell leveraged the power of the Motion and HPC Modules to speed up their design process by partnering with R Systems, a provider of high-end computing resources for research, to conduct their simulations on an 8-node HPC cluster setup, allowing them to complete 300 iterations now in only two hours.
