Vacuum Calculation and Simulation Tools

Vac­u­um tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ist, Ley­bold, has devel­oped two new online tools to assist customer’s pump choice and lay­out of com­plete vac­u­um sys­tems: The Pump Find­er and the cal­cu­la­tion tool Ley­calc. With these new web-based tools, users can select and build their vac­u­um solu­tions online. They are designed to be used for two dif­fer­ent use cas­es: The home­page https://calc.leybold.com/en/lp leads to both the Pump Find­er and Ley­calc, the vac­u­um sys­tem cal­cu­la­tion tool. Users with vac­u­um know-how can use Ley­calc to cal­cu­late the behav­ior and per­for­mance of vac­u­um sys­tems in detail. The Pump Find­er guides even begin­ners to suit­able prod­ucts by a questionnaire.

Step by step to the right offer

The Pump Find­er is designed to nav­i­gate vac­u­um users step-by-step to find the ide­al pump for their appli­ca­tion. Through­out the selec­tion tool, pumps can be refined by enter­ing val­ues for cham­ber size, tar­get pres­sure and pipe dimen­sions. There are two cal­cu­la­tion options for mod­el­ling dif­fer­ent vac­u­um appli­ca­tions: process flow and vac­u­um cham­ber pump down. A process gas flow is a con­tin­u­ous gas flow where the con­stant pres­sure is con­veyed. A vac­u­um cham­ber pump down is an appli­ca­tion where the cham­ber is pumped/evacuated to a spe­cif­ic tar­get pres­sure. The result is a selec­tion of vac­u­um pumps that meet the cus­tomer’s requirements.

Targeted product selection

Ley­calc can be used for detailed engi­neer­ing of vac­u­um sys­tems using the same pow­er­ful algo­rithms as Leybold’s appli­ca­tion experts. The tool allows cus­tomers to cal­cu­late their vac­u­um sys­tems ful­ly inde­pen­dent­ly and for com­plex sce­nar­ios, the experts offer their full sup­port. “Pre­vi­ous­ly, we had to adjust para­me­ters such as cham­ber size, process gas­es, cycle times, pipe length and pres­sure val­ues dur­ing the ini­tial con­tact with the cus­tomer. With the help of the sim­u­la­tion soft­ware, the user can inde­pen­dent­ly cal­cu­late con­fig­u­ra­tions and get an ini­tial idea of the vac­u­um per­for­mance,” explains Dr. Tom Kam­mer­meier, Glob­al Appli­ca­tion Man­ag­er, Indus­tri­al Vac­u­um. “In the past, there were often lengthy dia­logues about such details,” says Kam­mer­meier. Now users can per­form their cal­cu­la­tions inde­pen­dent­ly – with the result that the entire process leads to a more tar­get­ed and faster selec­tion of the right solu­tions for the appli­ca­tion. “We expect Ley­calc to improve the con­tact qual­i­ty with our cus­tomers,” sum­ma­rizes Kammermeier.

Efficient communication and fast solutions

Once the user of the online tool has defined the pump’s cham­ber and the tar­get pres­sure, Ley­calc per­forms the cal­cu­la­tion of a pump down curve: The result is imme­di­ate­ly dis­played in a dia­gram. This shows exact­ly how long it takes to pump the air out of the cham­ber to a defined pres­sure and how the pres­sure devel­ops over time. Alter­na­tive­ly, the user can cal­cu­late the pump­ing speed curve of a pump sys­tem. This shows which pump­ing speed is pro­vid­ed at a cer­tain pres­sure. All cal­cu­la­tion data is stored cen­tral­ly and can be called up at any time and from any device by cus­tomers who have reg­is­tered. Cal­cu­la­tion results can also be shared with spe­cial­ists at Ley­bold. This allows a detailed dis­cus­sion about the respec­tive vac­u­um appli­ca­tion. Over­all, the plat­form leads to con­sid­er­ably more effi­cient cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tion and faster solu­tions in com­plex projects. Leybold’s vac­u­um experts will be hap­py to answer any ques­tions regard­ing spe­cif­ic cal­cu­la­tions in a time­ly fashion.

Conductivity losses immediately apparent

“In addi­tion to the cham­bers and pumps of a vac­u­um sys­tem, the dif­fer­ent influ­ences of pipelines are also tak­en into account. These include the con­duc­tance effects in all pres­sure ranges and flow regimes, block­ing and, of course, the vol­ume of the lines,” explains Hannes Kamecke, the IT man­ag­er respon­si­ble for the online con­fig­u­ra­tor. In some cas­es, it then becomes appar­ent that a pump with high­er indi­vid­ual per­for­mance would not improve the over­all vac­u­um per­for­mance because the reduc­tions are caused by an incor­rect­ly dimen­sioned pipeline. “How­ev­er, the dia­gram imme­di­ate­ly shows that the pipe diam­e­ter needs to be increased,” explains Hannes Kamecke.

Further development planned

Nav­i­ga­tion through the web-based soft­ware solu­tion is con­ve­nient­ly pos­si­ble on all kind of devices like tablets, smart­phones. Sec­tions in need of expla­na­tion are linked to more detailed back­ground infor­ma­tion on vac­u­um tech­nique. In future, Ley­calc will com­prise the whole Ley­bold prod­uct port­fo­lio, cov­er­ing also high vac­u­um appli­ca­tions. “With the pub­li­ca­tion of the new cal­cu­la­tion tools, Ley­bold makes its vac­u­um know-how col­lect­ed over decades avail­able to its cus­tomers and thus lays the foun­da­tion for mod­ern dig­i­tal cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The offer thus rep­re­sents an impor­tant build­ing block in the dig­i­tal cus­tomer expe­ri­ence strat­e­gy of the vac­u­um spe­cial­ist,” con­cludes Hannes Kamecke.