Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Optimize equipment, industrial processes, and human environments, with advanced CFD analysis

Improper cooling fluid flow, ventilation, and air flow can result in many business challenges, including food spoilage and machine component performance issues. RWDI’s flow specialists can use CFD to help you better understand the impact to your business and identify how to proactively respond to the analysis.

CFD of Industrial Hopper and Cleanroom
CFD of Industrial Hopper and Cleanroom

Our service

We work to understand your context and priorities, so we can select the right methodology and deliver our technical analysis in a format that will help realize your objectives. We’ve helped clients achieve success in:

  • Equipment design. Optimizing the flow of air through a motor, CPU or piece of imaging equipment.
  • Power generation. Modeling how water flows within a building in the event of a cooling fluid spill; modeling the flow around ground or roof top mounted PV panels to optimize cooling.
  • Emergency preparedness. Modeling the impact of hurricane winds on cooling performance of emergency generators; modeling the evacuation of smoke from atria.
  • Pollution control. Understanding how emissions will travel from one or more sources, in a range of weather conditions.
  • Complex ventilation. Informing the design of HVAC and other building systems for environments with exacting demands, from operating rooms to rare-book libraries. 
  • Sports performance. Helping teams and venues gain insight into the effect of airflows on the play-of-the-game. 
  • Building design. Delivering design guidance including how to enhance the comfort of indoor and outdoor spaces, support door operability, mitigate unwanted odor migration.
  • Automobile design. Supporting automotive suppliers with the design of their products, making their manufacturing processes safe, and improving the worker environment.
CFD of Paint Booth Exhaust
CFD of Paint Booth Exhaust

Once we’ve carried out CFD analysis and shared the findings, we then work with design teams to apply relevant insights, iterating and refining solutions. Our fluid flow specialists also collaborate with our climate and meteorology teams when necessary, drawing on their knowledge of both typical and extreme weather to inform projects involving wind effects on sensitive facilities and emergency scenario planning for infrastructure. We help designers harness the local microclimate as well, to achieve thermal comfort in indoor and outdoor spaces.