Linking Flowmaster with Microsoft Excel: Powerful Tool for GUI Automation and Design Optimisation

World Class Mechanical Engineering

Global power company Cummins Inc. has been a thriving Flowmaster customer since 2002.  Since then, this global power company has had repeated successes in modeling both cooling and lubrication systems.  A great portion of these analyses has been performed by Cummins Research and Technology India Limited (CRTI), Located in Pune, India, CRTI provides world class mechanical engineering design and analysis for Cummins worldwide.

Creative Implementation of Flowmaster

CRTI supports all Cummins Business Units (Engine, Power Generation and Components (including Turbo Technologies, Emission Solutions, Fuel Systems, Filtration, etc.)) as well as Cummins Joint Ventures.  Among the multiple projects in this area, one stands out above the others, as Vinod Malapure, a Flowmaster user at CRTI, creatively implements Flowmaster to its design and analysis process.  Understanding Flowmaster’s capability to link with external software, Mr. Malapure takes advantage of his knowledge and expertise on Microsoft Excel to co-simulate with Flowmaster.

Full Capability for non-Flowmaster Users

The goal is to create a system where a non-Flowmaster user can use the Flowmaster solver without the need of having to personally manipulate the Flowmaster GUI.  The MS Excel representation of the Flowmaster CHP (Combined Heat and Power) plant model will allow the system engineers to easily change the input data and view the results in a single page.

Power Plant Cogeneration

A power plant rejects a large amount of heat to the ambient, which can be recovered and used for other applications.  If the amount of heat recovered from engines and/or other heat sources can be estimated, then this energy in turn can be used for cogeneration or simply for heating a building.

Modelling Using Heat Exchanger Components

Mr. Malapure was trained on the basics and functions of Flowmaster.  With this knowledge, he was able to build Flowmaster models for heat transfer and flow analysis of CHP. 

Co-simulation Analysis

Next, Mr. Malapure creates similar model in Excel sheet with colored blocks and lines to represent the components and component connections as in Flowmaster.  He designs the Excel sheet in a way where the user only has to change the independent design parameter within the given allowable range of values in its corresponding units.  Then, an internal code, written by Mr. Malapure, allows the user to execute a co-simulation analysis.  By linking Flowmaster, the results are reported back to Excel, one sheet in SI units and another in English units.

Powerful Tool for the Engineering Team

This methodology has allowed Mr. Malapure and his team of system engineers to work under a non-Flowmaster user level GUI architecture with all Flowmaster capabilities and benefits; view different results, such as flow rate, pressure, temperature, etc, for each component in a single page; analyze and understand the flow diagram in a systematic level; and run multiple scenarios in a relatively short amount of time.  Compared to having to perform calculations in a spreadsheet, and the time for a non-Flowmaster user having to learn and determine how to extract the results from Flowmaster, this GUI automation served as a powerful tool for the engineering team.

With the above system created and implemented within the analysis process, the engineering team seeks to calculate the maximum heat recovery from the system.  Simultaneously, this tool will be used to select the correct heat exchanger that delivers maximum efficiency.

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