Latest News September 2021

Frewer Engineering Expands Into New Offices

We are now settled into the 1870 building and related outbuildings giving us much greater space for expansion. This move is not just driven by the need for more office space, but also the need for much higher security and we have taken the opportunity to install much faster intranet (CAT6 and high speed fibre) along with quicker outside links to the internet.  The move has seen us invest heavily in new IT in both our servers and increased computing power and storage.

Our customers will benefit from speedier communications with us along with a great location to visit us for meetings!

New staff joining us just recently and others planned too, means we have plenty of space to create a great working environment for our people.

The new offices use remote solar power for electricity and our own biomass heating system for heat, making this move a more environmentally friendly home!

New Senior Design Engineer Joins our Team

We are pleased to announce that Gary Sharville has joined our design team as a senior design engineer. Gary has a wealth of experience in the field of gas turbine test rig vehicle equipment design, having previously worked at RR GmbH in Berlin along with AneCom AeroTest GmbH in Wildau Germany. Gary also brings a great deal of experience in the design of military gas turbine equipment. His specialities are in high speed rotating equipment design, compressor test rig design, turbine test rig design, bearing selection and integration and much more!

Gary will also be looking after some of more junior design team as part of his role. He is also making a difference on our combustion teams project working in the field of very high temperature testing. Our customers will benefit from having a “safe pair of hands” on their gas turbine test rig requirements.

New Addition to our Engineering Team

Last month Miguel Escudero joined us as a new starter in the Advanced Analysis Division, reporting to Martha Cooper (our head of CFD). Miguel has an exceptionally strong academic background, speaking four languages including German and Spanish. He has been studying for his Masters in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Surrey. This included two months at the Centre of Aerodynamic and Environmental Flow at the University. As part of this role Miguel was responsible for post-processing experimental turbulent jet data, regularly working with concepts beyond those taught academically at the University – image processing, statistical turbulence analysis techniques and vortex identification methods, etc.

Miguel has worked in support of aircraft design projects, collaborating with his colleagues to overcome design challenges including tail-plane instability, identification of suitably efficient propulsion systems and carrying out various aerodynamic optimisation studies on the fuselage, wing and empennage components. Miguel come to us with a mixture of CAD and CFD skills established. CFD codes under his belt are ANSYS Fluent, XFLR5, M.I.T.’s AVL aerodynamics software and now scFLOW.

Future Gas Turbine Development Equipment Design

Our Gas turbine Design & Analysis team are currently working on a number of projects involving very high non linearity events, in particular in the field of fan blade off modelling and associated impact modelling.  This activity sees us investing new software tools such as LS Dyna and this along with our suite of MSC tools provides a complete modelling service to our customers.

Our gas turbine team is also heavily involved with Rotor Dynamic modelling of compressor equipment involving the use of our Rotor Dynamic modelling software code (MSC).  Continuous investment in this technology is key for us.

At time of writing our gas turbine team are supporting a number of projects from compressor rig test equipment, combustion test equipment and much more.

CFD Analysis Team Update

Our CFD team are active in the complete thermal analysis of gas turbine test equipment – modelling cooling air flows and main structural wall temperatures and flows. They are also working on the optimisation of a new electric outboard motors for the marine industry.  This project involves optimising drag coefficients of the drive leg and investing the interaction of the propeller with the drive leg and its cavitation defence plate.

We have just invested in more software tokens to facilitate our CFD code tool SC Flow giving our team the ability to run multiple projects simultaneously! As mentioned previously, our investment in new IT and computing power is making a difference here as we are now solving CFD problems quicker than we could before!

Marine Defence

Both our CFD and Composites teams are heavily involved with a variety of both sub surface and surface equipment for the defence industry. Our CFD team are modelling complex fluid flows to gain better understanding of certain characteristics. Our composites team are modelling submarine excrencies in order to remove weight and consequent changes in manoeuvrability performance of the vessel.

Our marine defence team now have their own limited access office in our new home, giving greater security to their operations.

Frewer Engineering Collaborates with SHD Composites

Frewer Engineering’s Advanced Composites Division is delighted to be now working in close cooperation with SHD Composites Ltd with the aim of creating an extensive in-house database for a wide range of SHD’s composite materials, each having a multitude of mechanical properties critical for structural analysis.

Speaking of the collaboration, Frewer’s Divisional Head of Advanced Composites, Matthew Jeffreys, said: “Accuracy in composite finite element analysis is heavily dependent on the correctness of the input values for numerous mechanical material properties. In the composites analysis world, the requisite properties are extremely difficult to obtain without expensive commissioning as most manufacturers cannot attempt to test and validate every property that analysts require for every material produced; there are far too many combinations of reinforcement type and resin system to make that practical. Furthermore, the properties data most material manufacturers do provide are frequently quite rudimentary from the perspective of analysis and are often quoted to be on the ‘generous’ side when it comes to accuracy of values.”

SHD Composites have built an impressive in-house materials testing facility where all their products are batch-tested with an extensive range of mechanical properties that are independently verified. By working closely with SHD, Frewer Engineering is now able to offer customers who choose their materials a much greater level of confidence as even more accurate materials properties data can now be incorporated into the analysis.

Frewer Engineering’s CEO and Chief Engineer, Peter Frewer, added: “Although our collaboration with SHD Composites is not exclusive, having this relationship allows our analysis team to have access to independently verified material properties that will greatly assist us and SHD Composites’ customers searching for the most accurate structural analysis”.

High Speed Spinning Machinery Design

Our Advanced Engineering team are busy in the field of high speed spinning machinery design to support the development of new environmentally friendly large civil gas turbines. The projects involve complex rotor dynamic modelling, impact analysis and rotor system balancing.

Gas Turbine Test Vehicle design is remains the back stay of our business!

3D CAD Packaging of Complex Mechanisms

Our Advanced Engineering design team are currently working on a QUAD Shotgun for the sporting industry which involves packaging complex mechanisms within a very limited space. Weight optimisation is also key here along with the need to utilise our 3D printing (in house) capability to envisage the mechanism operation and then iterate to improve reliability and performance.

Update from the MD

So pleased you made it down to here!

As you can see, we are investing heavily in our business and equipment but it does not stop there for us.

Investment in our staff is also ongoing with several of our staff undergoing the Chartered Manager qualification, making them better equipped to deal with the management of their teams.

Investment in more Rotor Dynamic analysis capability is also ongoing for two of our staff.

Most of our staff are currently undergoing development towards to Chartered Engineer status and mentoring our team is critical to achieving this.

Our composite team are undergoing training in new NX composite modelling to allow modelling of thick and complex shape components with greater accuracy.

For myself, well I am currently undergoing management update training with the University of Winchester which hopefully brings senior management skills up-to-date with current thinking!

I hope you have enjoyed the read!

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