How Fluid Network Studio works

Fluid Network Studio takes a pipe network from a sketch to a solved, conserved result in four steps: draw it, choose the fluid and solve mode, solve, and read the results. The physics runs entirely in your browser - there is no solve server - and every result ships with its conservation residuals so you can see the maths balanced. Here is the whole workflow.

1. Draw the network on the canvas

You build the network as a schematic on the canvas, the way you would sketch it on paper. The building blocks are:

Reservoirs - a fixed head (a tank, a mains connection, an open atmosphere).
Boundaries - demand or flow boundaries (a fixed draw-off or injection, in L/s or kg/s) and pressure boundaries (a fixed pressure or gauge pressure).
Junctions and nodes - the connection points; node types such as elbow, tee and cross prefill their own minor-loss K, and any connecting node can be closed to switch a whole branch off.
Pipes - with length, diameter (including DN and Schedule sizing) and a material roughness; carrying optional thermal properties when heat transfer is on.
Pumps - with a head-flow curve and an optional efficiency curve; variable speed via the affinity laws.
Fans and compressors - for gas networks: a fan with a pressure-rise curve, or a set-point compressor.
Fittings - a Crane TP-410 minor-loss library for in-line losses.

You add elements from the palette, connect them, and edit each one's properties in the inspector. You can load any of the 14 built-in examples as a starting point.

2. Choose the fluid and the solve mode

Pick the working fluid and the mode that matches the problem. There are four solve modes:

Incompressible liquid - water and process liquids at constant density, solved in head. This is the default and is available on every plan, including the free Explorer tier.
Liquid with heat transfer - the same network with per-pipe heat loss or gain and enthalpy mixing at junctions. Advanced plan.
Compressible gas (isothermal) - air and process gases, solved in absolute pressure with mass-flow balances and varying density. Advanced plan.
Gas with a thermal march - a compressible gas line that also exchanges heat, solved with a temperature-and-density march along each pipe. Advanced plan.

The fluid library has water with temperature-dependent properties, gas presets (air, methane, nitrogen, carbon dioxide) and custom fluids, plus homogeneous non-Newtonian rheology (power-law and Bingham plastic), which also needs the Advanced plan. Incompressible water analysis on the Basic and Explorer tiers covers the great majority of everyday pipe-flow work; gas, heat transfer and non-Newtonian fluids are the Advanced additions.

3. Solve

Press Solve. Fluid Network Studio assembles the network with the Global Gradient Algorithm (Todini and Pilati, 1988) - the incidence-matrix formulation behind EPANET - and converges it with Newton iterations. Friction head loss is Darcy-Weisbach with the Churchill friction factor; fittings add fixed-K minor losses; pump curves are least-squares fits; variable-speed machines use the affinity laws.

In the other modes the same core is reused: heat transfer adds inner-film coefficients (Gnielinski or Dittus-Boelter) through a composite wall and insulation resistance with an outer film; the gas modes solve in pressure-squared with the isothermal pipe relation, and the gas thermal march integrates friction, acceleration and wall heat along each segment with Sutherland temperature-dependent viscosity. Whatever the mode, an energy and mass balance runs on every solve and the residuals are reported - conservation is checked, not assumed. The results are verified against an independent reference problem set spanning liquid, gas, heat and non-Newtonian flow, with OWA-EPANET 2.2 as the incompressible-water cross-check. The named methods are set out in the glossary.

4. Read the results

The answer comes back as colour, charts, tables and numbers:

Per-element results - flow, velocity, head, pressure and (in heat modes) temperature on every pipe and node, plus film, march and non-Newtonian flow-regime diagnostics where they apply.
Colour-coding - shade the network by velocity, pressure or temperature to see where the action is at a glance.
Profiles - trace the hydraulic grade line or the temperature along any pipe run.
Pump and fan charts - the curve, the operating point, the best-efficiency point and the operating-region check; NPSHa with a cavitation-risk flag.
Validation panel and advisories - design advisories such as high velocity or negative pressure, with click-to-locate, against limits you can configure.
Tables, CSV and a calculation report - full result tables, CSV export, and a print-ready calculation report. Every report records the build version and date that produced it.

5. Save to the cloud or export

Work entirely in the browser if you like, save a network to a JSON file on your machine, or sign in to store projects securely in the cloud, isolated to your account. Export results to CSV or generate the calculation report when you need a record.

Reproducible results

The solver is deterministic: the same inputs, solved on the same build, produce the same result every time. Every calculation report records the build version and the date it was produced, alongside the document schema version, so a result you file today can be reproduced and audited later.

See it on a real network

Reading about a solve is no substitute for running one. The built-in examples cover all four modes - water networks, an insulated hot-water main losing heat, a compressed-air line, a fan and duct, a compressor, a cooling hot-gas line, and homogeneous non-Newtonian fluids. Open any of them and solve for free.

A good first run is the pump and system example (the operating point), the compressed-air line (a gas network) or the insulated hot-water main (heat loss along a line). For how the same physics meets a design task, see the application guides for compressed air system design, pipe heat loss and pump system design.

Fluid Network Studio is built to support engineering work, not to replace a qualified engineer's judgement - check every result in the context of your application before relying on it.

Launch the Studio - free to build and to run the 14 built-in examples.