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Process and chemical
The largest part of our analysis casework by volume — equipment that has to perform thermally and survive structurally at the same time.
Equipment we work on
| Equipment | Typical questions |
|---|---|
| Heat exchangers | Flow maldistribution, thermal effectiveness, tube-sheet stress, vibration of tube bundles |
| Separators and knockout drums | Residence time, carry-over, internals effectiveness, shell and support stress |
| Reactors and mixing vessels | Blend time, dead zones, shear distribution, thermal gradient and resulting stress |
| Storage tanks | Shell stability, foundation settlement response, wind and seismic load cases |
| Ducting and manifolds | Pressure loss, flow split, thermal expansion and support loads |
| Process piping | Layout, stress, support design and material take-off |
The recurring problem
Process equipment is where thermal and structural behaviour meet, and where treating them separately produces wrong answers. A vessel sized for pressure and checked for stress in isolation can still fail because a thermal gradient nobody modelled put the real peak stress somewhere the pressure calculation never looked.
Having CFD and FEA in the same office, run by engineers who talk to each other, is worth more on process equipment than on almost any other class of work.
Proof points
Representative studies include CFD assessment of heat exchanger performance, orifice chamber pressure-drop and velocity distribution, storage tank stability under varying load, and structural analysis of bag filter casing and stiffener arrangements.
Process equipment question?
Send the datasheet and the problem. Most enquiries can be scoped within a working day.