AFT Fathom

AFT Fathom is particularly useful for:

• Pipe Sizing
• Pump sizing and Selection
• Control Valve sizing and Selection
• Simulating System operation and component interaction
• Evaluating heat transfer in pipes and heat exchangers
• Troubleshooting existing systems to determine the cause of operational problems

Evaluate New Designs and Improve Your Installed Systems

AFT Fathom…

• Accurately simulates individual system components and their interaction
• Tightly integrates equipment characteristics, analysis and output with your system’s schematic representation
• Provides a wide array of features without sacrificing your need for a short learning curve
• Frees you to focus on your system, not the mechanics of software manipulation
• Significantly improves the quality of systems engineering you can achieve, leading to less costly, more efficient and more reliable piping systems

Features

• Advanced hydraulic solver using Newton-Raphson matrix methods
• Detailed modeling for centrifugal and positive displacement pumps
  • NPSH evaluation
  • Variable speed pumping
  • Impeller trimming
  • Viscosity corrections using standards from the Hydraulic Institute
  • Wire-to-water efficiency calculation including pump, motor and variable frequency drive efficiencies
  • Power usage and motor sizing
  • Energy cost calculation
• Scenario Manager to track all design variants and operational possibilities in a single model file with data linkage
• Integrated graphing and reporting
• Pump vs. system curve generation including individual head curves and composite efficiency
• Conduct thermal analysis including piping heat transfer and heat exchanger modeling
• Calculate the costs of pipes and other components
• Supports Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids
• Import GIS Shape files
• Perform fire system analysis in accordance with NFPA and create NFPA specific reports
• Address viscosity and frictional changes associated with pumping non-settling solids
• Built-in library of fluids and fittings can be extended and customized
• Optional Chempak add-on utility provides a thermophysical database of almost 700 fluids

Benefits

• Understand the hydraulic behaviour of your system and predict how pipes, valves, pumps and other components will interact with each other
• Evaluate the performance of new designs and assure all design requirements are met
• Identify and correct operational problems in installed systems
• Produce less costly, more efficient and more reliable piping systems

Take Your System Designs to a New Level

Building on the foremost modeling software for incompressible pipe flow systems, the AFT Fathomadd-on modules extend your design, analysis and simulation capabilities. These modules have been designed specifically and can work with any AFT Fathom model.

• Automated Network Sizing- Automatically size piping to minimize weight and cost
• Goal Seek & Control – automates identification of input parameters that yield desired output values and simulates control functions
• Extended Time Simulation – models dynamic system behavior
• Slurry Modeling – models the effects of moving settling slurries in pipes

Automated Network Sizing

Benefits

• Size your piping network as an integrated system to ensure you find better design combinations
• Manage your iterations, enabling efficient comparison of more design concepts.
• Use design cases to size a system while anticipating different operating requirements or future expansions.
• Perform economic analysis without opening another program.

Capabilities

• Apply design objectives to minimize system costs including pipe weight, duct volume, and monetary cost
• Specify design requirements such as pressures, flowrates, velocities and NPSH throughout a system
• Size a system for multiple operating conditions, meeting design requirements using dependent design cases

Goal Seek & Control (GSC Module)

Benefits

• Evaluate the effects of changing system parameters
• Save time by avoiding manual iterative analyses
• Simulate control system behavior

Capabilities

• Define multiple variables and goals at multiple locations
• Define goals as single point, differential or sum
• Calibrate models by automatically adjusting pipe friction and scaling to match measured data
• Modeling parameters for variables or goals include
  • Control valves – setpoint, open percent
  • Pumps – speed, flow, head rise
  • Valves – open percent, Cv/K, delta P, flow
  • Reservoirs – pressure, temperature
  • Orifice – diameter, area
  • Heat exchangers – heat rate, temperatures, area, U value
  • Spray discharge – area, K value, discharge coefficient, exit pressure

Extended Time Simulation (XTS Module)

Benefits

• Understand how critical system parameters vary over time
• Automatically change variables for a dynamic simulation of your system

Capabilities

• Define a wide range of actions to occur during the time simulation including:
  • Tank volume and liquid level tracking
  • Pump start/stop and speed variation
  • Valve position changes
  • Control valve setpoint variation
• Text and graphical output
• Unique animation feature dynamically displays time-varying parameters along selected flow paths

Settling Slurries (SSL Module)

Benefits

• Expertly handle slurry system challenges
• Avoid system failures and excessive operational costs
• Prevent plugged pipes and misapplied pumps
• Reduce energy usage
• Improve system performance
• Reduce operating and maintenance costs

Capabilities

• Solutions from the leading Wilson/GIW method
• Shareable database of solid particle properties
• Slurry pump de-rating using Warman or ANSI/HI methods
• Produces output reports with settling velocity, slurry volume/mass flows and other slurry parameters
• Generates slurry systems curves critical to understanding system velocity limits