The design of a brand new reciprocating compressor cylinder is a difficult and time expensive task, involving CAD, FEA and CFD tools, which can take several months. Following standard approach, usually several trials are needed in order to achieve the most suitable solution. Every time it is necessary to change some design/model features, all the following operations have to be repeated: modifying the CAD model; meshing the model; calculating new loads and/or boundary conditions; configuring the results analyses; post process the results. Following standard methods each described operation has to be performed manually by a user.
This paper describes a method to achieve the automation of most of these manual operations, transferring the workload from human to hardware resources, with a consequent saving in time needed to achieve results and related quality.
Paper will describe the process (including details about FEA and CFD analyses) to design a cylinder with this method, compared with a traditional one. The comparison will show differences in delivery time, weight and total cost (engineering + production) between the cylinders.
