Virtually Engineering Energy Conversion Plants

Tuesday, July 14 2009

Photovoltaic and wind energy plants, hydroelectric power stations, and biogas plants can be complex to design and maintain. In designing a hydroelectric power station, an engineer needs to know what the pressures, temperatures, and fluid flows will be in the facility. Virtual reality makes planning and operation easier.

The pressure, temperature, and fluid flow parameters could be simulated with simulation software. However, this only delivers vast columns of numbers or a one-dimensional representation which an engineer would have to analyze bit by bit.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg, Germany sought out to make this process easier, and developed a method that visualizes the processes inside energy conversion plants. To do so, they coupled 3-D plant engineering and simulation results with a virtual reality (VR) program developed at the IFF.

“A special software tool has enabled us to visualize all the motion sequences for the first time ever – at just the push of a button,” explains Dr. Matthias Gohla, Manager of the Process and Plant Engineering Business Unit.