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.
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
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.