|
AFT Mercury - Intelligent System Sizing
Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP
Intelligence. Whether your goal is to minimize first or life cycle cost, it’s
a key ingredient in the design of cost
 effective
piping and ducting systems. AFT Mercury, powered by IntelliFlow, is the first
software product to offer the piping systems engineer intelligent, automated
sizing of system piping, ducting and components to achieve this goal. With
comprehensive system modeling capabilities, a flexible graphical interface and
an advanced optimization engine, AFT Mercury with IntelliFlow is nothing less
than new technology that will allow you to effect significant cost savings on
your piping systems.
Minimizing system cost requires a comprehensive approach to the sizing of
piping, ducting and system components. With their large number of variables and
constraints, rigorously appying such an approach to real world systems is rarely
practical. Using the advanced technology of IntelliFlow, AFT Mercury
automatically selects pipe, or duct, and component sizes that will achieve your
goal of minimum cost while satisfying your system’s constraints. Sizing may be
selected to minimize initial or life cycle cost, or engineering parameters
including minimum pipe weight, volume or surface area. AFT Mercury, with
IntelliFlow, doesn’t just analyze your system, it actually automates a critical
part of the system design process. IntelliFlow comprehensively analyzes the
complex interaction of the various components to system performance and cost to
intelligently determine the optimal sizes of piping, ducting, pumps, valves and
other system components for minimum system cost while satisfying a wide range of
selected criteria. The savings in materials, installation, energy and other
costs associated with your piping or ducting system can be dramatic. Traditional
methods of system optimization simply can’t compare. No matter how well you
think you’re doing with your systems design, you’re guaranteed to find
signficant savings with AFT Mercury.
AFT Mercury is built on and includes all of the modeling building tools and
analysis capabilities of AFT Fathom. Models of incompressible piping systems may
be developed and analyzed within AFT Mercury as in AFT Fathom, or model files
developed within AFT Fathom may be opened by AFT Mercury. Please refer to to AFT
Fathom pages for a description of of these capabilities.
In addition to these powerful analysis and modeling simulation capabilities, AFT
Mercury employs an advanced optimization engine developed by Vanderplaats
Research & Development to automatically determine optimal pipe and equipment
sizes.
Selected through Optimization Control, AFT Mercury will perform either and
Engineering Optimization or a Cost Optimization.
Engineering optimizations will determine optimal pipe sizes to minimize one of
the following as selected by the user:
Pipe weight
Pipe plus fluid weight
Pipe volume
Pipe surface area
Cost optimizations will determine optimal pipe and component sizes to minimize:
Initial, or non-recurring costs (materials, installation), or
Life cycle cost, the sum of non-recurring and recurring costs (energy,
maintenance)
Whether an Engineering or Cost optimization is performed, the user may elect to
have AFT Mercury conduct a continuous or discrete optimization. In a continuous
optimization, AFT Mercury will identify the optimal pipe diameters on a
continuous basis, that is, as if any diameter were available. When discrete
optimization is selected, AFT Mercury will first conduct a continuous
optimization, identifying the optimial inner diameters of the piping, and then
proceed to identify the discrete optimum inner diameters from the list of
available sizes; e.g. IPS nominal pipe sizes. Discrete optimization is
significantly more difficult to determine than continuous optimization and is an
example of the advanced capabilities of AFT Mercury that make it unique as the
first optimization tool for real world systems.
Optimization Interface
In addition to the optimization engine, AFT Mercury includes several unique
interface features necessary for
 optimization,
as described below.
Size Ranges (Discrete optimization)
When AFT Mercury searches for an optimal system, it does so by evaluating
different pipe size combinations. The user tells AFT Mercury which sizes to
consider through pipe size range sets. Any number of size range sets may be
defined and a size range set may include any or all of the pipes of a material
type. These may be selected from any of the several standard pipe databases
included with AFT Mercury or may come from a new pipe database input by the
user.
Size range sets provide both control and flexibility in optimizing your system.
For example, you want to use standard steel piping but exclude 3-1/2" and 5"
which, while part of the IPS sizing, are not commonly available. Or you may want
to limit the maximum height of ducting considered basid on clearances available.
This is readily done by including in the size range set only those sizes meeting
your criteria. Since any pipe in the system may be associated with any size
range set and any number of range sets may be included in the model, one can
readily optimize a system that contains mixtures of pipe materials, schedules
and size ranges.
Pipe Linking
Just as practical optimization will usually consider a select set of pipe sizes,
there are a variety of reasons why some pipes should be grouped into a common
size. For example, while a supply main with many branches may theoretically have
many size reductions as flow is decreased along its length, in practise we know
that a more limited number of sizes along the supply main is desireable to
reduce the number of pipe sizes to be ordered and handled and to avoid excess
reducer fitting costs. Too, there will be instances where it is obvious that two
or more pipes should be the same size, such as the supply and return lines to a
heat exchanger which are carrying the same flow and have the same length and
similar configuration.
In AFT Mercury pipes may be linked to a reference pipe, referred to as a link
basis pipe, which will keep all such linked pipes the same size as the reference
pipe. Linking thus provides the user control to maintain a consistency in pipe
sizes where desired.
Constraints
Constraints are the primary means by which you communique your design
requirements to AFT Mercury. Approximately 60 different constraints are
available, including - Pipe constraints - velocity, flow rate, pressure,
pressure gradient Pump constraints - NPSHR margin to NPSHA, BEP (best efficiency
point) proximity, head, pressure rise, speed, power Control valve constraint -
pressure drop, Open percentage And others.
Constraints are defined within a constraint set, which may include any number of
constraints. Also, an AFT Mercury model may use any number of constraints. Any
number or combination of requirements may be specified in the optimization of a
system.
Optimization over Multiple Cases
Many, if not most, systems have multiple operating requirements. A ducting
system that operates with both fans in the summer but only one in the winter, or
a water supply system that must provide a minimum flow and pressure to the
system demands during normal operation while also meeting minimum supply
requirements to hydrants during fire suppression. With AFT Mercury you may make
any number of alternate cases of your system model, with each using its specific
constraints. Optimization of the system is thus obtained while considering the
requirements for each of the differing cases.
Cost Databases
As with AFT Fathom, AFT Mercury includes engineering databases for piping
materials, components (pumps, valves, etc.), fluids and insulation. The standard
material database contains information for the following pipe materials:
IPS size steel
IPS size stainless steel
PVC
PVDF
HPDE
Ductile iron
Copper tubing
Copper pipe
Rectangular ducting
Round ducting
Additional pipe materials may be easily added to the database by the user.
 Any
component defined within AFT Mercury may be added to the Component Database
making it readily available to add to any system model. These can be virtually
any type of piping system component; pump, valves, control valves, heat
exchangers, etc.
In addition to these engineering databases, AFT Mercury utilizes cost databases
to use in conjunction with cost optimization. Each cost database is associated
with an engineering database. Multiple cost databases may be associated with an
engineering database, providing great flexibility in managing costs for item.
For example, separate cost databases may be developed for black and galvanized
steel pipe. Both can be associated to the steel pipe engineering database and
then used in a specific optimization by simply connecting to the cost database
desired. Or you may have defined the hydraulic characteristics of a pump and
included them in the component database, but have not yet settled on whether it
will be cast iron/bronze fitted or of fully bronze construction. One can easily
conduct an optimization with either by simply changing the pump cost database
used.
AFT Mercury's cost database manager lets you readily define and review costs for
items. The definition of costs can be done in a variety of ways best suited to
each item. Piping, for example, may have costs associated by unit length of
weight. Pump and control valve costs may be define on a per unit basis or a per
power or flow capacity basis. Other piping components such as valves and
fittings, may have costs defined on a per unit or per diameter basis. In all
cases, costs for both non-recurring (material, installation) and recurring
(operation, maintenance) may be included. Indeed, any type of cost that may be
characterized as either non-recurring or recurring may be included in the cost
calculation and, therefore, the cost optimization. Additionally, recurring costs
may be varied over time, for example, a per kw-hr rate varying over the system
life span.
Output
AFT Mercury includes the same rich output combination of text based and
graphical output of AFT Fathom and,
 in
addition, output related specifically to system optimization.
Cost report provides a detailed listing of all costs by item, along with
summaries by cost group (piping, pumps, etc) and type (materials, installation,
operation, etc).
The piping section optimization tab displays the optimized by sizes, while
Scenario Manager allows you to create an optimized scenario with these pipe
sizes.
Active constraints for pipes and junctions are displayed, clearly indicating
what's driving your design. While any number of constraints may have been
included in the optimization, only some will be limiting how low a cost may be
obtained. Perhaps a velocity constraint has been included and is active. If so,
allowing a higher velocity will permit a reduction in system cost. Is the higher
velocity worth the cost reduction? This is easily tested with AFT Mercury by
changing the constraint value and re-running the optimization.
If you have any further queries concerning this
software, please drop us a note
and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Purchase Online
We have a number of purchase options available in our
store. Our goal is to ensure that you feel comfortable in buying our
software. We therefore employ the highest level of security for online
transactions and accept all major credit cards as well as various options
to purchase such as electronic fund transfer (EFT) or bank draft. Should
you prefer not to provide your details online, we understand and ask that
you send us an email
requesting a pro-forma invoice for the
software in question. Please include relevant company details should you
decide on this option.
We have been selling software via the internet for many years, and
have a list of satisfied customers from across the globe. Should you require references from
some of these companies and individuals please let us know.
  
Purchase Online
Should
you like to download a demo of this software, it is available by
clicking the link below.
|
|
