Projects, Facilities & Construction: Computational Fluid Dynamics - What can it do for you?

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used in many industries for design and troubleshooting; aerospace, food, and petroleum to name a few. Airplane and spacecraft, industrial mixers, and combustion reactors are all designed with CFD. Through CFD, the effects of wind and ocean currents on fluid-structure interactions can be analyzed and accounted for in design of offshore platforms and equipment.

This luncheon meeting will have three short presentations followed by a panel discussion. The first one, from a CFD simulator supplier, will provide an overview of what CFD can do; a variety of example applications will showcase the broad range of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) solutions for Oil and Gas Production, Transport, Refining, Downstream Processing, Oil and Gas machinery and equipment.  Topical areas covered will include hydrodynamic and structural assessment of offshore/marine structures, fluid flow, flow assurance, flow in porous media, erosion, drilling and completions, filtration, separation, health and safety issues, LNG safety, and more. The second presentation, from an oil company user, will highlight the use of simulation based engineering in the petroleum industry, allowing for a better assessment of risk and reduction of uncertainties in upstream & downstream applications. The talk will give an overview of cutting edge CFD technology and application examples. Among these, modeling of fluid-structure interaction to predict vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) of offshore structures, design of VIV suppression devices, and multiphase flow modeling to predict flow splitting in production manifolds. The third talk, from Nasa, will focus on their cutting edge use of CFD. NASA uses CFD models to support a wide variety of aerospace applications.  Typically these models are used to simulate environments that can not be replicated or easily measured in ground based test facilities. This presentation will highlight several Space Shuttle and Constellation Program flowfield simulations along with the CFD tools used to model them.  Applications that are beyond the capabilities of NASA's current tools will also be addressed.


Location: Houston Racquet Club
10709 Memorial Dr.
Houston , TX 77024

Date: Feb. 19, 2008, 11:15 a.m. - Feb. 19, 2008, 1 p.m.