Mechanical Design & Modeling

The EERC designs and fabricates most machinery in-house for demonstrating and testing technologies. The EERC routinely has requirements for the design and construction of highly specialized equipment. These requirements often involve using materials and equipment at or beyond normal design limits. In order to ensure the safety of researchers and the integrity of the research equipment, the EERC has a mechanical design group to address these needs.

Capabilities

The members of the mechanical design group represent a broad range of engineering design backgrounds. The current design staff has experience in the following areas:

Pressure piping design
Piping flexibility analysis
Stress analysis
High-temperature process equipment
High-vacuum systems
High-pressure process equipment
Municipal water-pumping systems
Cryogenic equipment
Heat exchangers
Structural steel
Rapid prototyping

Applications

In addition to the design of equipment for in-house use, the design group has been asked by a number of manufacturing firms to provide specific design expertise in the areas of stress analysis and design optimization of mechanical components.

Equipment

The design group uses Intel-based PCs as well as Sun workstations.

Engineering design packages currently being used by the mechanical design group include:

Autodesk Inventor – Drafting and solid modeling
CAEPipe – Piping flexibility analysis using finite element analysis (FEA) method
AutoSTAAD/MAX – Model preprocessor for structural analysis using FEA method
STAADIII/ISDS – Structural analysis using FEA method
ABAQUS – General stress and heat-transfer analysis (linear and nonlinear) using FEA method
Cosmos/M – General stress and heat-transfer analysis using FEA method
Cosmos/M Designer – General stress and heat-transfer analysis using FEA method
HyperMesh – Model preprocessor and postprocessor for FEA method
MathCad – General purpose math package
Code26 software package developed in-house to design equipment in accordance with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Boiler and Pressure Vessel Codes Section VIII Div. 1 and Div. 2 and ASME Pressure Piping Code B31.3
ZPrint rapid prototyping – 3-D color printing of prototype models using ZCorp 3-D printer hardware