Compressed Air Simulator

The modelling engine

Model the system, not just a single operating point

Many compressed air calculations answer a question at one operating point — pressure drop through a pipe, compressor duty cycle, leak flow, receiver sizing. They're useful. They just answer one formula at a time.

CasPro models the complete system over time. Compressors load and unload, receivers fill and empty, demand changes, pressure moves through the network — and every component affects the components around it. The decisions you're testing happen to that whole system, not to one formula in isolation.

01 — One connected model

The complete system runs together

Every compressor, receiver, pipe, filter, dryer, machine and leak you draw becomes part of the same model.

During a run, CasPro advances that model through time, one second at a time. Each second it solves the entire network at once: compressor controls respond to pressure, receivers store or release air, machines draw air, leaks discharge, and pressure and flow settle across every pipe and junction together. When conditions change too fast for a full second — a big consumer opens, a compressor drops offline — the step subdivides automatically until the solution holds.

Run that across hours, shifts and operating modes, and you see behaviour no single steady-state calculation can show.

One run, second by second

07:42:11compressor 1 loaded · receiver 6.38 bar · demand 9.2 m³/min
07:42:12packaging line starts — demand steps to 12.4 m³/min
07:42:13header pressure falling · receiver discharging
07:42:14machine 4 sees 5.94 bar · compressor room 6.31
07:42:15pressure reaches load setpoint — compressor 2 loads
every second: the whole network, solved together
8-h shift 28,800 system states → kWh · load cycles · motor starts · €/yr

02 — What that shows you

Behaviour a calculator can't show

Dynamic behaviour is usually where the money hides — and it's exactly what a single-point calculation flattens away.

Compressor cycling

Not an estimated duty cycle — the actual sequence. When each compressor loads, unloads, starts and stops as system pressure moves through the day.

Storage

The receiver fills and empties as demand changes. See whether more storage changes energy use, cycling — or neither.

Point-of-use pressure

Whether the pressure you generate in the compressor room still exists at the machine when demand peaks.

Changing demand

Different shifts, operating modes and load profiles — combined into annual energy use and cost.

03 — Calibration

Then make the model behave like your plant

A model built from nameplate data and design values is a starting point — but real plants drift. Compressors wear. Pipework isn't quite what the drawing says. Filters add pressure drop. Actual demand differs from the estimate.

So CasPro calibrates the model against measurements from the real system — readings you can take with a pressure gauge, a stopwatch and a clamp meter.

Measured pressures

Enter pressures measured at known points in the plant. CasPro works backwards from the readings, adjusting the network's pressure-loss characteristics until the model reproduces what you measured.

Pump-up test

Time how long your receiver takes to fill through a known pressure range. That calibrates what the compressor actually delivers — not the nameplate FAD it had when it was new.

Power & current

A clamp-meter reading calibrates the compressor's real power draw at load and unload.

Load/unload timing

Observed cycling refines the balance between supply, demand and storage.

Shutdown leak-down

A pressure-decay test with production stopped puts the system's real losses into the model.

Once the baseline reproduces what you measured, every scenario you test runs against your plant — not a textbook plant.

Every parameter keeps its provenance — nameplate, manual, calibrated or locked — so you can always see what was measured and what is still assumed.

04 — Scenarios

Change the system without touching the plant

Duplicate the calibrated baseline and test the decision you're actually weighing. Swap a compressor. Add a VSD. Lower the setpoint. Add storage. Repair the leaks. Resize a header. Combine several. Then run the same operating conditions again and compare every variant with the baseline — energy, cost, cycling, starts and point-of-use pressure, side by side.

Measured plant
Calibrated baseline
VSD retrofit
Lower setpoint
More storage

Compare against the baseline

Δ €/yr · load cycles · motor starts · point-of-use bar

05 — The physics

The engineering underneath

The model is built on established engineering relationships for compressible flow, pressure loss, compressor behaviour, storage and leakage — standard, published methods, on purpose. Where an exact analytical solution exists, the engine's implementation is checked against it, and those checks re-run on every engine change. Every run also closes its own air balance.

Check Reference Result
Receiver filling Closed-form fill solution match
Pipe pressure drop Darcy–Weisbach, laminar & turbulent match
Leak discharge Choked-flow decay solution match
Compressor power Polytropic compression work match
System mass balance, every run Air in = air out + air stored <0.01%

Try it on a real system

We're working directly with a small group of compressed air professionals ahead of the public launch. Bring a real plant or a live project, and use CasPro on a system you already know.

Apply for access