Show Me the Money

Show Me the Money

Cuba Gooding Jr’s conversation with Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire became the mantra of a whole generation.

Show _me_ the money.

Your manager no doubt says the same thing to you all the time but in different guises:

• Can we improve product performance/functionality?
• Can we reduce the cost of producing this product?
• Can we cut the budget without sacrificing quality?

And let’s not forget the “I want to get the product out to market faster. Can you do that without costing an arm and a leg?”

So what can you say to your boss?

Yes we can … hmm, I’m a walking/talking cliche today.

Fluid flow and heat transfer simulation is the perfect tool for helping you answer those questions. Simulation will not only serve as a cost-effective alternative to physical prototype testing but it’ll also provide you with a visual way of communicating the behavior of your designs with others:

Improve product performance/functionality<

Schüco, one of the leading producers of photovoltaic panels, used FloVENT computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to redesign its products to improve their thermal performance so that 15% to 20% more panels can be used in a given space. Today’s photovoltaic panels present a major thermal design challenge since every degree Centigrade of temperature rise reduces the power produced by 0.5%. “The CFD results helped us understand exactly how the panels were being heated and guided us as we made major improvements to the design,” said Hamid Batoul, Technical Director of Solar Department, Schüco International, Paris, France. “As the first in our industry to perform CFD simulation, we believe that we are now able to provide our customers with substantially higher power output than an equivalent competitive design.” To read more about how the Schüco team achieved this please click here.

Reduce Production Costs

JAZO Zevenaar B.V. cut 20 days from their design cycle for four new weatherproof, outdoor transformer housings. JAZO is widely known for its expertise in designing, manufacturing and marketing protective housings for electricity, gas, telecommunications and boilers. The louvers which are manufactured from aluminum and steel are thin yet quite resilient. These patented structures are flexible and can be customized to fit any height – JAZO has about 50 profiles to match all customer requirements. “The combination of Pro/ENGINEER for solid modeling and FloEFD.Pro for airflow analysis allows us to test our louvers for form, fit and function effortlessly” said Henry Aaldering, technical director at JAZO. “We can show the finished design to our customer complete with how it will look and work in just one day – that’s a saving of 3 weeks and thousands of Euros for each model. In Holland, physical prototypes may be tested at special organizations but this is slow and rather expensive and a one day session at these organizations costs around €2,500.” How did JAZO’s team accomplish these savings? Please click here to read more.

Cut Budget without Sacrificing Quality

AnJen Solutions recently used FloTHERM CFD software to assist MagneMotion, Inc. in their design of a vertical lift elevator made of linear synchronous motors (LSM). AnJen Solutions performed a weight versus thermal performance analysis of the LSM rail heatsink. “FloTHERM provided a detailed understanding of the conductive heat transfer between the heatsink and the LSM rail support structure and convective heat transfer to the surrounding environment,” said Michael Rigby of AnJen Solutions. “The simulation demonstrated that reducing the number of fins and changing the fin spacing and thickness would reduce the weight of the heatsink by 1/3 while providing the same thermal performance as the initial design.”To read more about AnJen’s challenge, please click here.

Get to Market Faster

Elma Electronic used CFD to optimize the design of a new Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) platform that is designed to dissipate up to 300 Watts in each of its 14 slots. Elma thermal engineers used FloTHERM’s capability to automatically run a series of flow simulations while varying various dimensions and other parameters to achieve design goals such as maximizing airflow over the boards. “The optimization of the chassis via thermal simulation studies made it possible to beat competitors to market with a highly innovative product,” said Ram Rajan, Thermal Engineer for Elma Electronic. For additional details on this specific case, please click here.

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