Interview with Peter J Francis

Featured Engineer

Peter J Francis

Peter J Francis - Head of Design at ebm papst UK Ltd

How did you get into electronics/ engineering and when did you start?

My first exposure to engineering was as a child playing with Meccano along with my lifelong interest in all things aviation my fate was pretty much sealed as far as a career was concerned. I started a Mechanical engineering apprenticeship in 1976 and upon completion I became a draughtsman (that was in the days of drawing boards , pencils and set squares ! ).

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

There are so many tools , obviously my Dell laptop is the most used piece of hardware however as part of my job at ebm-papst UK Ltd I get to use a wide variety of tools including an Environmental Chamber.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

I’ve been doing a lot of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) work recently with FloEFD (Mentor Graphics). I use it to analyse both our own designs and those of our customers. FloEFD provides a useful insight into both airflow and thermal issues affecting modern products and is now becoming an everyday part of our design process.

What is the hardest/trickiest bug you have ever fixed?

I recently worked on a CFD analysis for a customers design that was producing an annoying audible pulsing noise superimposed on top of the normal airflow noise. Despite having a sample of the equipment we couldn’t isolate the cause of the noise.

I modelled the equipment in our MCAD system and then checked the airflow on our CFD, this clearly showed a vortex forming on the inlet to our fan in addition the vortex was moving, when I looked at the vortex over a period of time it coincided exactly with the period of the offending noise we were hearing.

A small change to the customers equipment cured the noise problem saving weeks of work for our customer.

What is on your bookshelf?

Work Reading
At the moment I’ve got a number of CFD books from NAFEMS, my company has just joined NAFEMS and as part of the membership we get a number of their publications. The following is a sample of the titles I’m reading or intend to read soon;
How To- Ensure that CFD for Industrial Applications is ‘Fit for Purpose’
Introduction to Grid and Mesh Generation for CFD

Leisure Reading
Programming Interactivity: A Designer’s Guide to Processing, Arduino, and Openframeworks by Joshua Noble

Do you have any tricks up your sleeve?

My main tricks are related to Design workflow ; I use Pro/Engineer and its macros (called Mapkeys) to perform ‘potted’ tasks , very useful for those repetitive tasks like generating PDF’s and DXF’s for drawings and models. I also use a Wiki called ProjectForum to store information and present results of my CFD work its very easy to use and allows me to quickly record information and allows the same information to be reused and linked.

What has been your favorite project?

I’ve worked on so many different projects from aircraft systems to flight simulators and UAV’s it is really difficult to choose a favourite. I suppose like most engineers my favorite project is the one I’m currently working on, which is a Retail Display Case for a large supermarket.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

At a previous company I was the Mechanical Designer for their range of Unmanned Air Vehicles and I got to perform stress testing on the airframes as well as take part in flight testing and customer acceptance trials it is

What are you currently working on?

I’m performing CFD analysis on a Retail Display Case for a large supermarket its proving very challenging and interesting from an analysis point of view. I’m also writing blogs for the DesignSpark website. I’ve only been doing this for the last year but its been immensely rewarding as I’ve made contact with lots of new and interesting engineers and have had the oppertunity to comment on relevant issues

Do you use Social Media at work ?

Yes , I use Twitter (@peterjfrancis) and LinkedIn these are mainly information sources as I follow people who are relevant in my industry but I also follow a number of people in the Open Source software and Hardware community.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

The status of engineers is a particular concern for me as some of my blogs will testify — Proud to be an Engineer and Today is a day to be proud to be an Engineer as engineers we should be actively promoting our profession and educating those around us as to the benefits of engineering for the whole society.