Flakt Woods Group, EASA Ltd, Ansys Inc.
Web-Enabled Computational Fluid Dynamics
Reijo Kohonen, Vice President, Technology - Fläkt Woods Group:
"To optimise performance of our new Elea air terminal devices in every customer installation, we are using a unique web-enabled design tool developed together with software from ANSYS, Inc. and EASA Ltd. The Elea air treatment system is a breakthrough solution to provide customised increased air quality in an existing room.
Sales and Application Engineers can now employ powerful Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis at the proposal and design stages of every new Elea project. This allows us to demonstrate clearly the performance and value of our Elea product, and to optimise its deployment. This drives increased customer satisfaction and profitability for Fläkt Woods.
Engineers securely access the Elea design tool across the internet, often while they are together with our potential customers. They set up the customers' individual design case, including room layout and heat sources, device selection etc. They submit the analysis, via the web, directly to our central CFD simulation environment, and the results are returned to them later over the internet in a clear and concise report. The user interface of the design tool is designed to provide control, visualisation, help and feedback, so that Engineers can perform simulations. Our CFD
experts are available to provide support as needed but are not required to process every case end-to-end.
EASAs’ Software is used to provide the web-enabled User Interfaces and to manage the submissions and results. CFX-5, from ANSYS, Inc., provides the CFD simulation models as well as the solver and post-processing power. Before the web-enabled tool was developed, experts from ANSYS, Inc. performed extensive validation of CFX-5 against Fläkt Woods' own experiments, in which Elea equipment was tested with various room configurations, heat sources, and aerosol air pollutant sources. The satisfactory outcome convinced us that CFX- 5 is suitable for the challenging HVAC calculations, in which mixed convection and transitional turbulence are commonplace.
The success of this application means that we are planning to build new web-enabled design tools across our product range, together with CFX and EASA."