CFD Aided Design: Case Studies

Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD, has evolved from a scientific interest to a practical engineering tool that can assist engineers in the design and optimization of equipment of different types and for different applications. The present work introduces two case studies where CFD analyses are employed as a tool for design evaluation and optimization. These include the case of designing dust extraction devices for the wood industry and the case of improving the uniformity of the air inlet velocity distribution in a convective dryer. The methodologies and typical results are presented in each studied case. The importance of the simulations in the design and optimization was demonstrated as they allowed the calculation of the equipment behavior in situations that are otherwise hard to foresee, either because of the unpredictable combined effects of different features or because of the counterintuitive results.