Piping Design and Fluid Dynamics

If the heat exchanger length is the engine of a geothermal system, then the piping design is the transmission. GLD provides a revolutionary new toolset for quickly and automatically optimizing piping system design.

GLD includes two piping design related modules: the Piping System Builder (PSB) module and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In addition, these two modules can be purchased together as a stand-alone product, The GLD Piping System Builder Edition.

The Piping System Builder is a fast and easy-to-use front end tool that enables the designer to quickly specify simple or complex design layouts ranging from heat exchanger circuit lengths to balancing valves and manifolds and everything in between.

The user then transfers the design layout to the Fluid Dynamics Module which quickly builds the entire system piece by piece, purge optimizes it, analyzes its performance and provides a detailed summary that includes, among other outputs, a system circulation pump efficiency rating, a Reynolds number analysis and a purge analysis. In addition, the program outputs a complete piping bill of materials.

The two piping design modules integrate seemlessly with the heat exchanger design modules. Via this integration, it takes only a few minutes to design, optimize and specify a full commercial piping system.

Some of the more powerful features in the Piping System Builder and Fluids Dynamics Modules include:

  • Full integration with the heat exchanger design modules
  • Automatic "everything" mode that builds, optimizes and balances a fully manifolded system of any size/number of circuits effortlessly.
  • Automatic flow balancing with balancing valves for any size system
  • Automatic headering design for purging
  • Automatic purge pump requirement reporting
  • Automated piping bill of materials generation
  • Automatic system fluid volume calculations
  • Direct and reverse return system design and simulation
  • Manifold and vault design
  • Advanced fluids database
  • Manual customization and control options for all pipe components
  • Tremendous analytic "what if" modeling capability

GLD provides designers with an advanced, comprehensive, easy-to-use and customizable engineering toolbox for optimizing ground source heat pump systems. Download a trial now to see why GLD is the #1 geothermal design software in the world.

Screenshots:

 

TheSummary panel displays a full piping system report including analytics and performance scores.

The piping materials list includes all required pipe types and pipe lengths for an entire system design.

 

The Circuits panel offers flexible circuit design related inputs as well as real-time design feedback.

 

A summary view displays supply-return runouts with varying lengths (and balancing valves options).

The user can define default pipe sizes and types for use in automated/manual headering system design.

Outputs include automatically engineered headering designs for user-defined targe purge velocities.

Outputs include auto-calculated balancing valve pressure drops for each supply-return runout pair.