Latest News February 2023

Welcome to the Frewer Engineering latest news February 2023.

 

In this issue we report on a number of highly active areas of our business as we see growth across all markets! 

 

Composite Design Enters Service

Composite component

Our composite structures team completed the design of a complex carbon fibre structure which utilised a Cyanate ester resin system capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 300 degrees C.

The structure includes a Flexcore aluminium honeycomb sandwich, which facilitated the lay up over a complex double curvature surface shape. Due to the particular aerospace application, the component was analysed under vibration, shock and thermal loading to simulate the in service environment.

Included in this part was a novel Frewer Engineering developed sealing system. This new sealing method involved co-bonding a Kevlar flexible material into the main structure, allowing very large relative movements of adjacent components whilst maintaining a gas tight seal.

The components have just entered service with our customer and are being used to duct airflow around a pylon mounted civil aerospace engine.

Efficiency in CFD Assessments

CFD Flow

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) offer a plethora of challenges to an engineer, notably the computing time and cost of running a model. Even with impressive computing power, in schedule driven projects, CFD can often govern the critical path to delivery, making the experience to implement the right balance of accuracy and efficiency invaluable.

At Frewer, we champion customised solutions poised to deliver results at the right resolution. We have recently been modelling sections of a gas turbine test rig, harnessing a combination of implicitly represented flow conditioning features using porous media modelling techniques, with highly accurate shape-oriented polyhedral meshing around critical flow directing structures. This told us everything we needed to know to decisively inform concept down-selection with KPIs such as average swirl angle, velocity uniformity & flow reversal metrics, and still gave us time to assess a variety of different concepts.

Gas Path Flow Analysis

gas path flow

Our advanced analysis team have been busy modelling internal gas flow paths to determine pressure losses, effects of rotor on flow circulation, design of labyrinth seals and more. The development of compressors with increasingly better performance characteristics is a requirement in a variety of industries, with some of our more recent work focusing on fuel cell development and future gas turbine compressors development.

Marine Defence Industry Update

Marine ship

Maritime defence remains a busy market for our team, operating in the following areas:

 

  • CFD optimisation of wake and noise reduction.
  • Optimisation of marine composite structures.
  • Design of sub-sea marine structures.
  • Design of radome composite structures.
  • Advanced analysis of events involving Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) analysis.
  • Vibration and shock modelling.

Nuclear Equipment Expertise

Advanced Engineering Division

Our engineers have many years of experience supporting design and analysis workstreams within the nuclear sector. Our structures team are no strangers to impact, shock and blast assessments of equipment and buildings as well as analysing the integrity of heavy lift equipment to the appropriate standards. On the other hand, HVAC assessments of clean rooms and machinery spaces is an area that our thermal and fluids team excel in, feeding into iterative design loops to optimise heat loading, cooling and ventilation within varying space constraints. In addition, our teams are well versed in communicating with regulatory bodies, including engaging with the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). This combined experience allows us to provide a comprehensive service to the nuclear sector.

Commitment to Data Security

Latest News December 2021

A summary of recent activities from our MD: We are currently working towards our annual re-accreditation to Cyber Essentials Plus, having already achieved our re-accreditation for the standard Cyber Essentials. This is an in-depth process but ensures we are up to date with the latest security protocols across our IT system. Customer data security and confidentiality is one of our top priorities and continued accreditation with Cyber Essentials Plus is vital in ensuring this. In additon, we can report that the majority of our engineering team now hold security clearances, thus facilitating larger defence related projects to be resourced.

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