SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation Helps Techsburg Inc. Validate Designs

TriMech is fortunate to work with clients from Maine to Florida and out to Arkansas, offering a range of engineering solutions. This week’s client story showcases design validation in the Aerospace Industry with the use of SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation.

The world of fluid dynamics is one of the most challenging for engineers. From overcoming technical challenges to avoiding liability; we have solutions to help our clients deliver quality products and services, on-time and on-budget.

The Challenge

Techsburg Inc., one of our long-time clients in Christiansburg, VA, is a provider of engineering services and precision manufacturing capabilities to the defense, aerospace, and energy industries. Their customers rely on their core expertise in aerodynamics, turbomachinery, and aeroacoustics to solve their most demanding analysis, design, and testing challenges.

Techsburg designs hardware for their in-house wind tunnels using SOLIDWORKS, and Flow Simulation provides them with an easy-to-use, streamlined interface to analyze and validate their designs. Recently, Techsburg encountered an issue in their Annular Turbine Guide Vane Cascade Wind Tunnel during testing for a major client in the U.S. gas turbine industry.

SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation

“The inline nozzle flow meter in the wind tunnel exhaust was giving inaccurate mass flow rate measurements,” said Techsburg President Stephen Guillot. One of their engineers analyzed the highly-complex wind tunnel exhaust flow path using SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation and determined that high levels of swirl were being ingested into the flow meter.

Within a matter of hours, he had designed and validated the performance of a flow straightener section to mitigate the issue, and they were able to send off drawings to have the part fabricated the next day. Accurate CFD analysis of complex flow paths with such a rapid turnaround time would never have been possible using labor-intensive ‘traditional’ CFD methods. The advanced automated meshing capabilities coupled with accurate fluid flow calculations, all within our existing SOLIDWORKS CAD environment, has enabled Techsburg to respond to customers’ needs with previously unheard-of efficiency.

Want to learn more about SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation? Watch our On-Demand Webinar!