Jazo cuts design time for transformer housings from three weeks to one day

“The combination of Pro/ENGINEER for solid modelling and EFD.Pro for airflow analysis allowed us to test our louvers for form, fit and function effortlessly,” says Henry Aaldering, technical director at Jazo. “We can show the finished design to our customer complete with how it will look and work in just one day – that’s a saving of three weeks and thousands of euros for each model. In Holland, physical prototypes may be tested at special organisations but this is slow and rather expensive, and a one-day session costs around eur2,500.” Jazo builds protective housings for electricity, gas, telecommunications and boilers. The louvers, which are manufactured from aluminium and steel, are thin yet resilient and flexible. The structures are patented and can be customised to fit any height – Jazo has about 50 profiles to match all customer requirements. While creating its new family of transformer rooms, the team found that minimising pressure loss was a major design challenge. The rain-resistant structures rely on natural ventilation, so pressure loss results in less airflow through the housing and higher temperatures. With an extensive range of new designs, creating physical prototypes for each design permutation was not financially feasible. By standardizing on Pro/Engineer and EFD.Pro, the engineering team was able to create and test multiple prototypes quickly. In addition, the group fed the results from EFD.Pro into Pro/Mechanica as input for structural analysis. “Using an integrated design, the FEA and CFD process has definitely helped us save time and money and given us a competitive edge,” says Aaldering. And it seems that customers agree, as Jazo is the leading company in Holland for safety ventilation louvers and facades for utility buildings which have to be ventilated.