Up till now, one could have either dynamic, flexible and easy, orrigorous modelling tools. Now you can have all these properties in one tool.

Another Heat Transfer Language (AHTL)

Heat Transfer Consult has developed a unique thermo-hydraulic software tool called AHTL (Another Heat Transfer Language). AHTL makes it really easy to rigorously and dynamically simulate arbitrary, complex heat transfer systems. AHTL can solve  problems that are beyond the scope of standard thermo-hydraulic engineering software.

This is the principle:

AHTL models subcomponents such as walls, streams and heat transfer. Combining these, virtually any kind of heat exchanging equipment can be composed.

	A stream is divided into a string of nodes, where the thermodynamic state is defined. Model quantities include control volume size, flow area, elevations and friction model.
	A wall can have any number of layers, but at least one. Each layer may be of a different material, whose properties can be specified as a function of temperature.
	The stream and wall models are connected by heat transfer models. The heat transferred to a wall is taken from the applicable fluid flow. This guarantees consistency of the calculations.

AHTL has the following properties:

	There is virtually no limit to the kind of equipment that can be modelled, nor to the modelling detail, nor to the size of the models to be simulated.
	The above subcomponent models are rigorous, full engineering strength. O-O techniques hide their inner complexity, allowing easy, fast and reliable modelling of heat transfer equipment. A small number of models is re-used again and again. Since these are error free, all models built on top of them are also error free.
	The related difference equations are automatically generated and integrated in the time domain, resulting in dynamic simulations.

More information:

A paper on AHTL: "Thermo-Hydraulic Engineering using first principles" appeared in Applied Thermal Engineering (Volume 27, Issue 1, Pages 177-184, January 2007)

A paper "Heat Transfer through Metal Walls of Finite Thickness; The Art of Quenching a Polymer Melt at a Metal Wall"  in International Polymer Processing (Volume XXI, issue 1, Pages 41-48, March 2006)  describes an application of AHTL to polymer physical property research.

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