Christmas Newsletter and Greetings

Wishing all our clients and partners a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2020!

Frewer Engineering’s Year Review

It’s been a year of major organisational change and expansion at Frewer Engineering. To match customer demand we have created three new Divisions – for Gas Turbines, Composites and CFD. Each is now headed by experienced senior engineers or analysts – specialists in their subject matter. In addition we have created a new role for a Senior Technical Lead – Structures, whose responsibility is to oversee the appropriate implementation of analysis and computing methods across all Divisions.

2019 has also been a year of exceptional growth for Frewer Engineering, both in terms of staff and the introduction of new technologies and software tools. We have expanded our engineering team with the recruitment of several highly experienced specialists in FEA, CFD, FSI and Composites from the worlds of Formula 1 and aerospace. To bolster our resources we have also taken on 4 new Graduate engineers and designers.

At our picturesque offices at Jayes Park, just south of Dorking in Surrey, our multi-disciplined teams work seamlessly across and within each Division, combining wide-ranging skill sets, broad industry experience and specialist analysis capabilities.

Frewer Gas Turbines Division

Gas Turbines Divisional Head: Simon Apsley

Simon is an experienced Chartered Engineer with seventeen years of professional experience as a Mechanical Designer, Senior Project Lead and Multi-Discipline Project Manager. Working previously for a major UK engineering consultancy, Simon has led a wide variety of multi-discipline projects, from 400-tonne test facilities, to novel bench top rigs, in highly-regulated industry sectors such as Aeronautical, Marine and Nuclear.

Frewer engineers are currently engaged in a number of high-profile Aerospace and Gas Turbines projects. These projects have required the close collaboration of our multi-discipline teams, combining skill-sets in concept design, detail design, aerothermal analysis, fluids and heat transfer analysis, CFD and FEA, making use of high-strength and high-temperature alloy metallics and carbon/kevlar composites.

The past year has seen significant growth in the sector, bolstering relationships with our manufacturing partners in the north of the UK. Development of this sector has included the recruitment of remote staff, to smooth the transition from design to manufacture for complex and time-critical rigs.

Frewer Composites Division

Composites Divisional Head: Matthew Jeffreys

Matthew has over thirty years’ experience in Formula 1 motor racing as a senior design engineer and project leader for McLaren, specialising in lightweight composite structures including monocoques, crash structures, front suspension, driver controls, bodywork and wings. After working initially as a Consultant for Frewer Engineering, he accepted a full-time role in June of this year and now heads up Frewer’s team of talented and versatile composites engineers, analysts and designers.

The Frewer Composites Division team has been growing throughout 2019 to match the increasing demand for composite solutions from our customers – whether that’s large sub-sea marine structures in E-glass, or lightweight aerospace structures in CFRP. Within Frewer Composites we have been systematically building our own comprehensive database of tested material properties, vital for accurate analysis of any composite structure.

In addition, many customer projects now require multi-disciplined analysis combining FEA, CFD and in some cases FSI (Fluid Structure Interaction). To serve these, we adopt the key Frewer Engineering value of maintaining close internal communication channels. This approach ensures agility, flexibility and efficiency across all Divisions often working to tight time schedules.

Frewer CFD Division

CFD Divisional Head: Martha Cooper Martha leads our Aerothermal, Fluids, Heat Transfer and CFD division. Martha has a strong analysis background, coupled with a wealth of project and programme management experience. Martha has been an asset to the business since her arrival in 2018 and development of this sector has continued from strength to strength. The Aerothermal and Fluids experts within the Frewer CFD Division have been closely engaged with the Gas Turbines division on a number of projects throughout 2019. This area of the business has seen significant growth and investment in hardware and software, as we have sought to model increasingly complex systems in greater fidelity. The close coupling of CFD with our design processes has been particularly valuable in highlighting aerodynamic strengths (and pitfalls!) at an early stage of design development.

The team has been using upgraded CFD tools to strengthen our existing thermal analysis capabilities. Close coupling of these services with dynamic structural analyses and FEA capabilities has allowed us to develop Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) modelling capabilities with ever-increasing accuracy. Within this division, we are particularly proud of the flexible working methods we’ve been able to adopt, allowing the best trained and experienced professionals from the industry to remain engaged in the business, regardless of location.

Technical Lead – Structures

Technical Lead – Structures: Graeme Anderson

After many years working for a major UK engineering consultancy, Graeme Anderson joined us in May 2019 as the new senior Technical Authority, Structures. Graeme has brought a wealth of experience in static and dynamic structural analyses, using a wide variety of analysis codes, across diverse industry sectors.

Since his arrival, Graeme has been fully engaged in a number of flagship projects with the Gas Turbines sector, providing structural assurance and safety cases for a number of high-profile development projects. Graeme has become an embedded part of the design development process at Frewer Engineering, allowing us to carry out iterative optimisation processes, swiftly and accurately. This agile approach has allowed us to carry out thermal tuning of high-temperature rigs, stiffness tuning of dynamic rigs and the development of mechanical fuses to protect valuable equipment from powerful fault cases.

Frewer Engineering are keen supporters of Life Long Learning and, in the spirit of this, Graeme has been developing the use of our Fluid Dynamics and CFD tools, in collaboration with our Fluids division, to encompass multi-physics thermal modelling and develop our Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) capabilities – a keen growth area for Frewer Engineering.

Case Study: Marine Structures

Our engineers assigned to a number of marine defence projects this year have used sophisticated ply modelling and FEA techniques to create a number of large-scale composite and composite/metallic structures. One such project was for large beam-like assemblies to be subjected to severe sub-sea environmental conditions whilst under static, dynamic and shock loading. Precise customer requirements for both stiffness and strength were met through detailed analysis of material properties and predicting laminate behaviour using our sophisticated suites of MSC NASTRAN and Siemens software tools. As with other divisions, our engineers working on marine projects work in close coordination with colleagues offering complementary skill sets in CFD, FSI and CAD.