Babcock & Wilcox Company

The Challenge

The Babcock & Wilcox Company is a subsidiary of McDermott International, Inc., a leading worldwide energy services company. McDermott subsidiaries manufacture steam-generating equipment, environmental equipment, and products for the U.S. government. They also provide engineering and construction services for the offshore oil and natural gas industries. The company chose to move to a 3D environment to improve its quality through better visualization and methods to check interferences. These capabilities would also give downstream users opportunities to improve their output.

The Solution

Babcock & Wilcox selected SolidWorks software because it will support the use of the knowledge-based engineering RuleStream system and can be used with a PLM system. The KBE programs can be developed within the company. Other 3D software packages are limited because they are more proprietary. In addition, the SolidWorks Simulation software for design validation and testing provides assistance to the company's mechanical engineers. This model was created by a team of technical designers at the Babcock & Wilcox Company. The model illustrates our (SCR) Selective Catalyst Reduction system. This environmental product is used by electric power companies to reduce power plant nitrogen oxide emissions into the atmosphere. With SolidWorks, we are assured that assembly in the model will fit up in the field. We can provide interference checking, field accessibility, and constructability. Issues in the field would be very costly to correct and outage span is very critical since these power plants produce electric power.