Numerical Simulation of Fluid Flow inside the Valve

Stop valves are commonly used as fluid flow control equipments in many engineering applications. Thus it's more and more essential to know the flow characteristic inside the valve. Due to the fast progress of the flow simulation and numerical technique, it becomes possible to observe the flows inside a valve and to estimate the performance of a valve. This paper presents the researches of the authors in modeling and simulation of the stop valves. The flow system with stop valves is complex structure and has non-linear characteristics, because the construction and the hydraulic phenomena are associated of stop valves. In this paper, three-dimensional numerical simulations were conducted to observe the flow patterns and to measure valve flow coefficient and flow fluctuations when stop valve with different flow rate and uniform incoming velocity were used in a valve system. The spectra characteristics of pressure fluctuation on the flow cross section were also presented here to investigate the wake induce of the valve part. These results not only provided people with the access of understanding the flow pattern of the valve with different flow rate, but also were made to determine the methods which could be adopted to improve the performance of the valve. Furthermore, the results of the three-dimensional analysis can be used in the design of low noise and high efficiency valve for industry.