In the design of many products, pressure and its loss are the most important considerations. After all, a pressure drop translates to a loss in energy which would have to be compensated by a higher energy demand. Therefore, it stands to reason that an optimized design resulting in the optimal pressure conditions, would result in energy savings.

Also as we all remember from school, there are many types of pressure – static, dynamic, total and potential pressure.  On top of that, how does the actual fluid behave? Is it incompressible? Does it have any friction? What’s the fluid density? 

While it’s easy to look-up the various formulas that can help us figure this out, it’s not always easy to apply them when you’re designing a complex product and need to calculate the pressure drop. That’s where Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) comes into play. CFD can be one of the most important design tools available to a design engineer as it can help you understand trends in your design and separate models with potential from the poor ones.