CFD Engineer

COMPANY

Groupe Atlantic are a French family owned international organisation employing 8,000 people and boasting a turnover in excess of €2bn. They specialise in providing heating and ventilation products for both domestic and commercial markets.

The UK & ROI Division has several market leading brands including the household name Ideal Heating who manufacture in excess of 400,000 boilers per year. Recent activity has seen a drive to support its increasing focus on new and sustainable heating technologies.

OPPORTUNITY

With the UK governments net carbon zero target of 2050, Groupe Atlantic have invested in decarbonising their product range with ongoing R&D into Hydrogen Fuelled Boilers and Heat Pumps, as well as ongoing work on Traditional Gas Boilers.

The group has a strong manufacturing culture as well as a mind-set that focuses strategy on people.  With an eye towards the future and backed by their experience, they have been able to evolve and grow by constantly expanding their skills.

Today, Groupe Atlantic is made up of twelve strategic and complementary brands that create thermal comfort solutions in four areas: Heating, Hot water, Air conditioning & Ventilation.  Headquartered in Hull, Groupe Atlantic’s UK business includes leading UK brands such as Ideal Heating, Ideal Commercial, Keston and Hamworthy.

Reporting to the Design Manager, the successful candidate will be responsible for developing models of various components in heat pump and combustion systems, using industrial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. By applying knowledge of fluid dynamics, heat, and mass transfer, they will endeavour to identify optimised solutions to the technical requirements in their projects. They will collaborate with both development and design engineers, to ensure CFD models are validated and optimised designs are practical to manufacture. They will be required to participate in all related engineering/technical activity in delivery of the project programme and development of the competence centre within R&D.

PERSON

The successful candidate will be expected to:

• Produce steady and dynamic fluid simulations and validate them against laboratory test data.
• Use optimisation techniques such as design of experiments or adjoint optimisation.
• Optimise new or existing designs with regards to pressure drop, mixing and heat transfer
• Develop mathematical models to form the boundary conditions for CFD modelling.
• Create macros to automate and increase productivity of the CFD process.
• Present their work and its significance succinctly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Provide innovative solutions and work towards generating intellectual property for the business.
• Perform Dynamic Meshing (e.g. dynamic non-return valve behaviour)
• Utilise cloud-based simulation.
• Use Moving Reference Frame or Sliding Mesh techniques to simulate turbo machinery such as fans and pumps.
• Provide technical leadership and take responsibility for the direction of the prototyping stage of projects.
• Help define the product specification requirements.
• Liaise closely with internal and external customers and suppliers and cross-functional team members.
• Ensure that design conforms to specified product performance, quality, cost, and business requirements.
• Continuous improvement, personal development and look for improvement opportunities in current working practices.

The successful candidate will be:

• Competent in the general CFD workflow of pre-processing, solving and post-processing.
• Skilled problem solver with the ability to take the wider view and apply engineering excellence.
• Logically minded with the ability to analyse and evaluate information quickly and accurately.
• Proactive with the ability to work on their own initiative, flexible and robust with a ‘can do’ attitude.
• Able to perform well whilst working under pressure and to strict deadlines.
• Confident personality with the skills to build and maintain positive working relationships quickly.
• Awareness of effective planning and implementation of design and development activity
• Team player with excellent communication and networking skills with strong drive and self-motivation
• Experience of the use of CFD in academia or industry