Uni-Duct® Duct System Design Service

McGill AirFlow can save you money with our Uni-Duct duct system design service. We use our state-of-the-art Uni-Duct software to perform time-consuming design work for you. It designs duct systems that have the lowest possible material and operating costs. Uni-Duct provides the most efficiently balanced and sized duct system designs available.
The Uni-Duct design service is available free to qualified customers. We can work with you from the start of your project, designing duct systems from an engineer's drawings or architect's layouts. If a finished design already exists, we can analyze the system to find ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs. We also use Uni-Duct software to analyze existing systems in retrofit projects.
Contact a McGill AirFlow sales representative at a location near you for more information.

Uni-Duct® Supply Program

Uni-Duct software employs the static regain design method enhanced by the total pressure method to design efficient supply systems. It creates static regain designs, analyzes pressure requirements, and determines a system's design leg or critical path (path of maximum static pressure requirement). Since nondesign legs and branches have excess static pressure, they need to be balanced. Unless a system is balanced, air will not be distributed properly. Some outlets will receive too much air, while others will not receive enough.
Uni-Duct uses a complex iterative procedure to reduce duct and fitting sizes in the non-design legs so that the available total pressure balances the system. The program evaluates each fitting to determine whether it can be replaced with a less expensive fitting that will perform the same function. These new fittings will use additional available total pressure, further balancing the system. By reducing duct and fitting sizes to balance a system, Uni-Duct provides duct system designs with low material costs.
Uni-Duct also designs balanced duct systems for a preselected system target pressure. Once all data has been entered into the program, a duct system design is revised simply by changing the initial parameters. This makes it easy to redesign a duct system for the lowest operating costs over the system's lifetime.

Acoustical Analysis

A major benefit of Uni-Duct® is that it provides an eight-octave-band analysis of a duct system design. The program produces an acoustical report that tells you if the design meets your noise criteria (NC level) requirements or if it needs additional noise control. This acoustical analysis accounts for natural attenuation of duct and fittings, sound power splits, end reflection, insertion loss of insulated duct and fittings, and generated noise.
Uni-Duct allows entry of insertion loss and generated noise level data for silencers and fan sound power level data for any manufacturer's equipment used in the system.

Uni-Duct® Exhaust Program

Particulate or fume exhaust systems should be designed for specific minimum carrying velocities to prevent the material from settling and plugging the duct. With Uni-Duct, these velocities can be entered for each type of particulate or fume where it enters a system. Uni-Duct designs the system to maintain all specified carrying velocities. A section with more than one carrying velocity requirement is sized to maintain the highest velocity requirement.
After designing the system to meet carrying velocity requirements, Uni-Duct analyzes the pressure requirements and determines the design leg. Since non-design legs and branches have excess pressure, they need to be balanced. Like the Uni-Duct supply module, the exhaust program uses a complex iterative procedure to reduce duct and fitting sizes so that the available total pressure balances the system without increasing its design pressure. Optimizing a design in this way reduces duct and fitting costs considerably.
An exhaust system designed with Uni-Duct operates at the lowest pressure required to maintain the design carrying velocities. Initial costs are lower because smaller sizes of duct are used and blast gates, cutoffs, and dampers often are not required.

Uni-Duct® Program Features

Key:
- Supply Program Only
- Exhaust Program Only
Optimized static regain design method that uses all available total pressure to balance the system and reduce duct cost (see McGill AirFlow's Engineering Report No. 144)
Unparalleled database that includes many types of fittings with performance data derived from actual laboratory testing
User-selected maximum and minimum velocities
Round or flat oval pre-sizing of any (or all) sections
Half-inch duct sizes through 15 inches
Round and/or flat oval designs
Automatically designs with flat oval whenever user-selected height restriction is exceeded
Fitting default selection (automatically uses less expensive fittings for better balancing where appropriate in nondesign legs)
Fitting selection override at any location in the system
Component pressure losses entered as either in-line losses or loss coefficients
Allows entry of outlet static pressure requirements
Entry losses entered as either total pressure losses or loss coefficients
User-selected diversity factors for any nonoutlet section
System can be designed to operate at a selected target pressure
Maintains minimum design carrying velocities
Corrects for non-standard elevation and temperature
An acoustical program that does the following:
  1. Accepts user-defined fan sound power levels or estimates the fan sound power levels by established practices
  2. Accepts entry of additional attenuation and regenerated noise at any point in the system
  3. Calculates all forms of attenuation and noise regeneration due to system components and airflow conditions
  4. Calculates insertion loss of 1-, 2-, and 3-inch-thick lined duct and elbows
  5. Determines path attenuation requirements for each terminal section based on user-selected NC levels
Products match SMACNA high- and/or low-pressure gauge requirements
Entry of duct material handling class
Automatic selection of duct gauge and reinforcement based on material handling class and duct pressure
Input data listings
Sectional analysis report provides the following data for all sections:
  1. Duct size
  2. Volume flow
  3. Velocity
  4. Static or total pressure drop (or regain) through the takeoff or branch fitting
  5. Cumulative pressure drop through all duct fittings
  6. Duct pressure drop
  7. Component pressure drop
  8. Cumulative static or total pressure drop (or regain) for the section
  9. Outlet or inlet pressure drop
  10. System static or total pressure at the entrance to each section
System analysis report
Acoustical analysis report
Report format for either static or total pressure (user selected)
Separate report of excess pressure at all terminal or entry sections (provides an indication of balancing and locates the system design leg)
Average and highest excess pressure in system shown on balancing report
Complete bill of material
Complete project information
Report includes suggested specification
Unprecedented design guarantee