Smoking meat (and other food) in a barbecue smoker doesn’t sound complicated, but there are more factors at work in producing delicious food than you would expect. Barbecue enthusiast Travis Jacobs, president of Jacobs Analytics, was aware that in windy conditions the air flow through the bottom inlets and the top outlet vents of a smoker can be variable, leading to internal temperature gradients and swirling air that removes smoke and makes a less savory product. He wanted to make a smoker that could smoke food to perfection in any conditions. Unlike most of us non-engineer weekend barbecuers, he turned to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to solve this problem.
Jacobs started with traditional solid modeling to perform CFD, but he soon ran into a problem: It was difficult to edit the geometry of solid models because geometric features are not configured as parametric variables. A lot of manual editing was required, which took up to two weeks for each iteration of a smoker.
As a member of the ANSYS Startup Program, Jacobs switched from solid modeling to ANSYS SpaceClaim direct modeling technology to make changes to the geometry quickly and easily. For instance, lengthening or shortening a pipe can be done by simply selecting the end of the pipe in SpaceClaim and either pulling it to make it longer or pushing it to make it smaller. Soon he was producing a new design iteration in five minutes, a significant improvement from his previous methods/tools.
Jacobs Analytics digitally explored many designs for the smoker before determining the best configurations.
By focusing on only one of the several possible air inlets in the bottom of the horizontal, barrel-like smoker, Jacobs was able to perform CFD simulations on an air flow restrictor in 15 minutes, compared to the six hours it would have taken to simulate the complete model of the smoker. Performing the simulations upfront in the design process, when changes are easy and inexpensive to make, saved overall development time and cost. Jacobs Analytics successfully designed a barbecue that smokes food perfectly in all weather conditions in a fraction of the time it would have taken with their original solid modeling technology.
Velocity profile over horizontal cross-section for the final smoker design. The final design has one long skinny inlet on the bottom and one long skinny outlet at the back angled at 30 degrees upward.
To learn more about how Jacobs Analytics stabilized the flow and temperature environment inside a smoker no matter the external conditions, read the full article in the latest issue of ANSYS Advantage magazine.
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