I'm a fluids guy and I work in Oil & Gas upstream facilities.
 

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
www.muleshoe-eng.com
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"Life is nature's way of preserving meat"  The Master on Dr. Who

Check out Harvey Kaye's "Inside the Technical Consulting Business". It's dated but most of his sample situations are about fluids and heat transfer as that is his expertise. From what I understand, industrial and defense companies are some of the potential clients.  

http://www.dfoxonline.com
.....executing your vision.

There is a forum under Mechanical Engineers for Heat Transfer and Thermodynamics. You might be able to find more of the folks you are looking for that might provide more insight there.

Some places for heat transfer engineers would be heat treating, foundries, forging, hot-forming, etc. Also of course OEMs that make equipment for the above industries.

Aerodynamics is a branch of fluids, so I would expect a lot of fluid specialists in creating vehicles (both flying and reducing drag of cars, trains, etc). Boat design as well.

-- MechEng2005

zdas04,
do you work for yourself? i have worked for Boeing in my area of fluids and heat transfer but there doesn't seem to be alot of need for these kinds of engineers in the self-employment world. thanks for the input..

I do indeed.  MuleShoe Engineering mostly exists in my head and on my laptop (disregarding a couple of printers and a Land Rover).  I started the company 6 years ago and have averaged (until March) over 200 billable hours a month.  Since March I've been billing about 100 hours/month.  It looks like things are starting to pick back up in the industry so I'm hopeful.

David

thanks david. i visited your website. looks like interesting work. what kind of ratio of total hours worked to billable hours? what kind of rates can one bill in your industry with a masters and some experience (5-10 yrs)? thanks for the input. scott.  

Rates are very much industry and location specific.  Even in Oil & Gas I've seen 30 year guys charging as much as $200/hour and as little at $125/hour, 10 year guys are probably $75-125.

I try to block one day a fortnight to do administrative crap.  I always do billing on the first of the month.  So I have limited non-productive time to around 3 days/month.  Today I finished paying bills at 10:00 so I've been working much of the day.  There have been months that I billed over 300 hours, but that usually involves a lot of dead time on airplanes.  

Charging for travel time sticks in the craw of some clients, but that is a gun I stand by--if I'm on a plane going around the world for you, then I can't be serving my other clients, if you don't like it either find someone closer or do the job via conference call.  I've gotten a reputation in a narrow enough field that they usually just grumble and pay it.  

In 6 years I've had zero clients refuse to pay an invoice and the only one that ever complained I had overcharged him eventually paid the full amount when I said "pay what you think the work was worth, if it is less than the full amount I'll move your company to the inactive list and won't accept any more work from you".  He paid.

David