Expert Consulting and Advising
Consulting.MKostic.com  <or>  Advising.MKostic.com

Expert Consulting and Strategic Advising for Continuous Improvement and Innovations: Energy fundamentals and applications for improving efficiency and optimization of devices and processes with a goal to be more economical, environmentally friendly and sustainable.

Thermal devices and processes are more elusive than mechanical and others, often counter-intuitive, and expert-consulting is more needed to identify and resolve many critical thermal and energy issues in the industry. The tendency to solve fluid/thermal problems by non-experts is risky at best and may be costly. Profound understanding of physical phenomena, tacit couplings of external forces and material/system responses and trends, of equipment and instrumentation used, are very critical for proper identification and troubleshooting of problems in industry, and for innovative development.

"Thermodynamics is important in addition to Dynamics: There is always a way to creatively improve and tweak nearly every device/process and to squeeze out more 'performance juices', particularly in less visible thermal energy area in addition to more visible mechanical area.” (by M. Kostic)

The competitive and rapid development of technology, requires now more than ever, that every company invest in continuous improvement, innovation, and research and development. Interaction between the experienced engineers in industry and visionary (and dedicated) experts and scientists could make a difference and a team bound for success. The expert-consulting should provide the complementary high-level expertise to "tip-the-balance" for effective and productive collaboration to achieve continuous improvement, innovation, and research and development in the industry. "Thermodynamics is important in addition to Dynamics: There is always a way to creatively improve and tweak nearly every device/process and to squeeze out more 'performance juices', particularly in less visible thermal energy area in addition to more visible mechanical area.” (by M. Kostic)

“With unprecedented advances in computational software and hardware, it is now possible for more people to get bad or useless results faster and cheaper than ever before.”

However, suitable simplifications, based on profound understanding of underlying physical phenomena (knowing "what and how" to simulate) and utilizing existing empirical results, will provide effective simulation and optimization, which when coupled with critical experimentation, may qualitatively improve design and production quality and yield, and thus reduce cost. Computational simulation alone can not replace existing empirical engineering and experience, but it does and will, more-and-more so, provide critical results about inner flow and heat transfer phenomena (a critical view inside  the “black-box”), which could not have been investigated by any other means. Thus, computational simulation can not and will not compete and displace empirical and experimental engineering, but will complement and enhance it to a new higher level by providing more effective and systematic use of existing experimental results, true what-if-analysis and much faster and less expensive design optimization, and increased quality of the existing processes and products. That is why the thermal design and engineering have been relying on experience, empirical data, and judgmental trial-and-error adjustment and tweaking of the process parameters and control.

".......It is important to repeat again, that computational simulation and ingenious experimentation engineering have their exclusive strengths and weaknesses and can not replace each-other, particularly for the cutting-edge performance, but if properly integrated, will strongly complement each-other, resulting in a synergistic winning outcome. “With unprecedented advances in computational software and hardware, it is now possible for more people to get bad or useless results faster and cheaper than ever before.” The message behind this quote is that many software are becoming more and more sophisticated, with more and more features and user friendlier, but we have to be very careful about how to use them and how to interpret and justify simulation outcomes. Profound understanding of physical phenomena and software features and constrains are very critical in properly setting-up simulations and outcomes justifications. Tendency of use of CFD simulation software by fluid/thermal non-experts is risky at best and may be costly. It is equally true for setting up a good experimental testing. "

"Professor Kostic's philosophy that every existing problem has its own (optimal) solution has resulted in a strong physical intuition and rational approach with high motivation for practical problem solving. Kostic believes that the only realistic proof of genuine (theoretical-concept) understanding is one’s ability to solve practical real-life problems."

Dr. Kostic's research and consulting expands from the customary, "shell-like" observations of flow and heat transfer behavior at a system boundary, to more complex observations within the "black-box," with the goal to better comprehend the underlying physical phenomena in order to effectively identify, troubleshoot, and provide innovative and economical solutions for industrial and research devices and processes.

    Solving practical problems helps "really" understand theory and concept, and vice-versa, so that one can then solve other problems more effectively. If we can not solve a problem, that "proves" we do not "truly" understand theory -- the key is integration/synergy of theory and practice, the "true" UNDERSTANDING! If one thinks theory is boring, that means one is not really interested in understanding to solve practical problems. 

    Be aware of complexity but make it simple!