Simulation software can help to significantly shorten product prototype development time in the heating, cooling and ventilation (HVAC) sector and Booyco Engineering says that it is using the technology to meet global standards.

“In the past, the conventional practice in product development was to build a physical prototype and then put it through a series of tests,” says Booyco Engineering MD Brenton Spies. “Often, these tests would lead to the rebuilding of new prototypes – to progressively remove the weaknesses we discovered by testing.”

The company says it has invested over R10-million in specialised Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software, used for modelling factors such as the strength of components, structure-borne vibration, and airflow and heat distribution inside its HVACs and conditioned spaces.

“These resources allow us to run simulations and iron out most of the issues before we even build a prototype,” says Spies. “The simulations cut down significantly on the time taken by the traditional ‘trial and error’ route in developing solutions for customers, allowing us to get product to the customer faster, saving both time and money.”

Booyco Engineering says that its new capacity has led to it becoming an approved supplier to global rail original equipment manufacturers. Booyco Engineering executive director Grant Miller explains how the company became the first South African supplier to locally manufacture a cooling tower for electric locomotives and says that the value added by the software was vital to the successful outcome.

“For the cooling tower we designed and built, we physically vibration-tested the components but not the actual structure,” he says. “This was because the structure weighed about a ton and a half. But we could conduct a detailed FEA to verify the structure, which satisfied the customer’s requirements.”

The company notes that the cooling tower has successfully operated on an electric locomotive since 2016 with no structural failures.