Zachry Nuclear Engineering (ZNE) has released version 5.0 of its PROTO-FLO software for the nuclear power industry. This benchmark software represents a significant revision of the first and largest software product in ZNE’s suite of software products for nuclear power plant system and equipment modeling.

“PROTO-FLO is used by about 80 percent of the nuclear industry and is particularly useful in helping engineers understand not only how systems currently perform, but how they will perform during more challenging conditions,” said Manager, Engineering Analysis, Scott Ingalls. “The ability to predict performance is a necessity in the industry.”

Version 5.0 calculates incompressible steady-state flows, pressures and temperatures in piping systems and models pumps, valves, heat exchangers and other components.

“The most visible improvement to PROTO-FLO is a more modern and user-friendly interface,” Senior Design Engineer David Gaiewski said. “Significant updates include the addition of a new algorithm that, in certain cases, allows the program to solve faster. There’s also a new drawing interface that makes the development of model schematics easier.”

The new version also incorporates several features of ZNE’s PROTO-HX software for modeling heat exchangers and allows users to link these two programs directly.

PROTO-FLO 5.0 builds on the software’s rich history of more than 25 years. This period includes the efforts that led to creating the original version of PROTO-FLO, which was one of the first Windows-based software systems in the industry.

“It started in 1989 when we began developing custom thermal hydraulic models to assist utilities with analyzing system conditions,” Software Program Manager Jane Connelly said. “Five years later, we went back to the drawing board and released the first commercial version of PROTO-FLO in 1994.”