Internal and external flow, conjugate heat transfer, pressure drop optimization, and transient thermal management — for fluid systems, underhood applications, and industrial process equipment. Direct analyst access. Results in weeks.
Darcy-Weisbach and the Moody chart are useful — for straight pipes with standard fittings at moderate Reynolds numbers. Add a 90° elbow, a branching manifold, a sudden contraction, or flow-induced heat transfer into a solid domain, and the empirical correlations break down. You need CFD, and you need it set up correctly.
Most CFD engagements fail at boundary conditions. Gas temperatures get guessed. Wall heat flux gets assumed uniform. Turbulence models get left on the default setting regardless of the flow regime. The result is a beautiful colorful flow visualization that's wrong by 30–50% on the quantity that actually matters for your design decision.
Each analysis type has specific requirements for turbulence modeling, mesh density, wall treatment, and boundary condition specification. The descriptions below explain the physics and the failure modes each analysis is designed to catch — not just the software buttons we press.
Flow distribution, pressure drop, and velocity field in pipes, manifolds, valves, and complex fluid transfer geometries. Optimization of port geometry, branching ratios, and fitting selection to minimize losses or achieve target distribution.
Simultaneously solves convection in the fluid domain and conduction in solid components — with physically correct thermal coupling at fluid-solid interfaces. Extracts local heat transfer coefficients for use in structural thermal analysis.
Time-resolved thermal solutions for startup cycles, thermal shock, and intermittent operation. The life-limiting thermal condition in most components is not steady-state — it's the transient peak during startup. Steady-state analysis never finds it.
Electronics cooling (forced/natural convection + radiation). Underhood heat management. Heat exchanger performance prediction. Component temperature mapping for reliability assessment under sustained operating conditions.
External flow over bodies, wind loading on structures, and wake analysis. Drag and lift coefficient extraction. Underbody airflow for thermal management contributions. Uses Realizable k-ε or SST k-ω depending on separation characteristics.
VOF model for liquid-gas interface tracking (filling, sloshing, condensation). Euler-Euler for dispersed two-phase flows. Cavitation onset prediction in pump inlets and valve throttling geometries. Boiling onset in cooling circuits.
Not every problem uses k-ω SST. For attached boundary layers and mild separation: k-ω SST is appropriate. For strongly separated flows and bluff bodies: Realizable k-ε. For natural convection dominated problems: SST with buoyancy correction. For unsteady vortex shedding: URANS or LES where justified. We document the selection rationale in every report.
Every production CFD study includes a three-level mesh refinement study — coarse, medium, fine — with the target quantity (pressure drop, HTC, peak temperature) extracted at each level. Results are only accepted when the fine-to-medium relative change is below the agreed tolerance. We report this data. It's not optional.
Where test data exists (pump curves, measured temperatures, mass flow rates from flow bench), we validate boundary conditions against it before running the production case. Where data doesn't exist, we bound the uncertainty with sensitivity studies on the critical BCs — and report the result as a range, not a false point estimate.
Residual targets alone are not a convergence criterion — they're a necessary but insufficient condition. We monitor the target engineering quantity (pressure drop, outlet temperature, integrated HTC) as a function of iteration. Only when this quantity stabilizes do we accept the solution. Converged residuals with a fluctuating heat flux is not a converged solution.
Tell us the geometry, the fluid, and what you're trying to predict. We'll scope a CFD study in a 30-minute call and deliver a fixed-fee proposal within 48 hours.
Discuss Your CFD Project →Initial response within 24 hours · NDA available upon request