Fluid Dynamics Consulting Services

Whether you are a small business without full-time engineering staff to undertake complex calculations, a large organisation with the occasional need for outsourcing at periods of high demand, or if you require specialist consultancy for that unusual one-off project, our dedicated fluid dynamics team can help. We will endeavour to quickly understand your problem, identify key issues, provide incisive judgement and offer practical solutions. Typical projects include:

• Virtual Test – Simulate where cost or practicalities of testing are prohibitive
• Design and Development – Screen, evaluate and optimise
• Troubleshooting – Diagnose and redesign
• Safety Case – Explore failure scenarios and quantify consequences

Armed with our insights and recommendations, you can make timely engineering decisions with confidence. Reducing development and commissioning time, shortening time to market, optimising performance and improving reliability all translates into lower project costs, shorter payback times and a higher return on investment. We offer experience across industries as diverse as wind energy, chemical processing, oil & gas, aerospace, automotive, power generation and bioengineering. Examples of physics that can be examined include:

• Mixing and separation
• Reacting flows
• Steady & transient flows
• Multi-phase
• Rotating frames of reference
• Heat and mass transfer
• Complex rheology
• Acoustics

Our fluid dynamics technical team has worked extensively in the design, evaluation and troubleshooting of systems involving single and multi-phase flow, turbomachinery, mixing process and equipment optimisation, fatigue and fracture mechanics. This includes a cross-over into solid mechanics (coupled stress and heat transfer, fatigue and fracture mechanics) further supported by our FEA team. We also have experience in predicting aerodynamic noise to evaluate acoustic pressures and SPL, and provide specialist expertise in sealing and tribology. The team is led by Dr Simon Leefe, with a background in Engineering Science and over 25 years of experience within a range of disciplines and industries.

“Our aim is to be part of your team. At Wilde, we can supply all of your fluid mechanics tools and expertise – not just CFD – with a premium quality service at a competitive price. As software customers, we will ensure that you get the right tools for the job and actively help you develop your own expertise with appropriate support and training that addresses your specific concerns. Our supporting consulting services will deliver more than mere solutions: you will be buying insight, interpretation and useable design guidance.” Dr Simon Leefe, Technical Director – CFD

“I must say that Simon’s approach and knowledge was very impressive and feedback from the client was that Simon was able to speak their language and understand their requirements as well as challenge them.” Micro Concepts Ltd

How Can You Start?
Simply contact us by email or phone for an informal discussion of your requirements with no-obligation. From an initial phone call we can often give you an idea of price and time scales. With further details and a CAD model (if you have one available), we can send you a scope of work and a formal quotation.

• Mathematical modelling of entrainment and separation in gas-liquid separator. Advice on relationship between performance of test scale unit and full-scale device.
• Technical services contract for provision of specialist fluid dynamics consultancy to independent research and technology organisation.
• Multi-physics simulation of charged droplet behaviour to support the optimisation of a high-tech measuring instrument.
• High temperature and pressure metal seals; establishment of number of thermal cycles in an API test fixture to produce equivalent wear in the field.
• Exploration of temperature distribution beneath bend stiffener in flexible riser.
• Performance characterisation of down-hole injection vavles across a range of sizes and operating conditions.
• Thermal management of electronic equipment including convective heat transfer.
• Specialist sealing and tribology services.
• Characterisation of flow vs. pressure drop behaviour in valves and actuators
• Thermal efficiency calculations for heat exchangers
• Safety assessments for a variety of high pressure equipment.

“I in particular found the briefing informative and your report was excellent in terms of depth, analysis and presentation.” Engineering & Quality Director, Senior Aerospace BWT

“Many thanks for your contribution. By your diligence you have enabled us to proceed with confidence.” Reviss UK Ltd, regarding peer review of a third party’s thermal analysis of a nuclear material container under normal and accident conditions of transport.

“Wilde have given a first-rate service enabling us to prove and improve critical design features …”
Moffat 2000 Ltd.

“MAHLE Industrial Filtration UK Ltd have worked with Wilde on a number of previous occasions where independent specialist knowledge, supported by the use of up-to-date computational techniques, were sought to support designs using conventional design processes.” MAHLE Industrial Filtration

“…pleased with the time Wilde take to understand our requirements …used them on a number of projects." Plextek Ltd.

“Wilde have always demonstrated a knowledgeable and professional understanding to our needs, and have been able to quickly and thoroughly assimilate our requirements, and equally quickly produce the necessary results to support our design process and provide guidance on the solution(s) best suiting our needs commercially and technically.” MAHLE Industrial Filtration UK Ltd.

“…efficient …required minimal interface, but provided a pragmatic approach & interpretation (of results)” Red Spider Technology Ltd.

“….Without the training and modelling techniques developed by Wilde, it would have been extremely difficult to predict the behaviour of the IR pre-heat oven. The training and execution was professional and exceeded the requirements set in the orginal brief, with extensive communication via meetings, e-mails and telephone conversations.” Managing Director, Glasscoat International Ltd.

“With the implementation of the CFD based models, design parameters could be indentified at the design stage, including IR emitters energy levels, accurate understanding of convection heat currents within the boundaries of the oven and temperature distribution. The computational investigation conducted has allowed Glasscoat International to offer the technology to the glass and other substrate markets.” Glasscoat International Ltd.

After agreeing a scope of work and time scales with yourselves, we can structure the pricing of a project in many ways:

• Fixed Price, against fixed quotation.
• Reimbursable.
• Reimbursable, against target price.
• Call-off contracts
• Staff secondments at an hourly rate

Clear and meaningful communication of results is an essential way we add value to your operations. Various levels of reporting are available:

• Extensive – often required for regulatory authorities, such as NII.
• Standard – Full report, but without the detail of the Extensive report
• Summary – Limited to basic facts, often presented as a Powerpoint presentation.

If your company also uses CFD software, we can also deliver the results databases to enable you to recreate the analysis and investigate the results in-house.

Project meetings are important and encouraged, particularly for complex or design optimisation projects, and can be held at our offices or yours. We also make increasing use of virtual meetings when appropriate using web conferencing services.

From experience with a leading seal manufacturer and a world-renowned research organisation, we provide specialist consultancy services in fluid sealing, contact mechanics, friction and wear. Through this expertise, we are confident that we can help you achieve superior product performance, with prolonged life, improved reliability, longer service intervals and reduced fugitive emissions. Typical applications include:

• Pumpshaft seals
• Flanged bolted joints
• Valve stems and bodies
• Machine elements
• Hydrodynamic and hydrostatic bearings and seals

Tribology services include:

• Surface topography design evaluation and guidance
• Friction, wear and component life estimation
• Contact stress predictions
• Device performance evaluation
• Thermal analysis
• Lubricant flow

Sealing services include:

• Troubleshooting and diagnostics
• Seal performance prediction
• Mechanical and thermal distortion analysis
• Design optimisation

With access to external specialists from a number of universities and consultancies, we can obtain additional expertise and experience to supplement our in-house team as required.

We also have relationships with overseas engineering service teams from India and other countries, stretching back over 20 years. Although all projects are undertaken locally by our UK office based team unless specifically approved by our clients in advance, outsourcing to offshore partners can on occassion offer additional bandwidth if you wish a large project to be completed very quickly. In such cases, responsibility for quality always remains with Wilde and confidentiality is ensured. From our experience, this capability does not typically provide a cost saving as the overall expense is similar to our UK activities due to increased project management, but can offer ‘peak shaving’ benefits to our clients.

If you are considering using Indian-based resources or setting up your own overseas analysis operation, we would be pleased to offer advice.