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Company:	Betts Industries
Industry:	Highway cargo tank valves
Application:	Gasoline tanker pressure/vacuum vent
MCAD System:	Pro/ENGINEER

Betts (www.bettsind.com) had the opportunity to redesign its vents that reside on top of gasoline trailers. The vents help ensure safety by normalizing pressure and vacuums that build up within the tank.

The aluminum die-cast body of Betts' current pressure/vacuum vent was modeled in Pro/ENGINEER. In designing its new model, Betts wanted to use native Pro/E data to conduct design trade-off studies without having to hire a full-time CFD specialist or outsource the work. The company found its solution in CFdesign from Blue Ridge Numerics.

"We wanted software that was tightly integrated with Pro/E, and didn't require the specialized expertise that is usually needed to solve complex CFD problems," says Kyle A. Anderson, the design engineer in charge of CFD analysis for the vent project.

Within the first day of running the model in CFdesign, Anderson generated 3D visualizations showing flow characteristics that he had not seen before. Over the course of the next two weeks, he tested different designs to analyze and compare critical data such as flow velocity, flow magnitude, and pressure differential under varying conditions.

"I could easily see the flow inside the model, where it was moving quickly and where there were pressure pockets, something you can't do in real life or on a flow bench," says Anderson.

Upfront CFD results showed that a relatively small design change yielded dramatic improvements, increasing the flow rate from 1,750 standard cubic feet per hour (SCFH) to 2,336 SCFH. The process took a total of about two weeks, compared to the estimated six to eight weeks that would have been required using physical prototypes, according to Anderson.

Testing of a physical prototype on a critical orifice flow tank verified the CFdesign results, giving Betts the confidence to move ahead on tooling for the new vent.

When the first of the newly designed vents hits the road in January 2007, Betts will be delivering to its customers a product that testing has shown to be 33-percent more efficient than its predecessor.