Fluid Flow inside a Valve

Current Research

Last Updated: 19 January 2015

People: M.J. Chern

A valve is an important device in industry. It is common that hundreds of valves are required for a piping system in a plant. The value of a valve can vary from a few dollars to hundred dollars. There are lots of valve manufacturing companies in Taiwan. To improve quality of valves manufactured by those companies and to raise their add-value, we were required to establish a experimental procedure to observe and measure fluid flows in a valve and a numerical model to predict fluid flows in a valve. This project took 3 years at Taiwan Tech. As a result, a closed loop water tunnel was established to observe and measure fluid flows in a ball valve. In addition, a numerical model set up using STAR-CD^TM was also used to predict fluid flows in a ball valve. At the same time, approaches to linearly control a ball valve were proposed and validated using the water tunnel and the numerical model. Details can be found in the following papers:

1. Chern, M.J., Wang, C.H., Lu, G.T., Tseng, P.Y., Cheng, Y.J., Lin, C.A., and Hu, C.M. 2014 Design of cages in globe valve. Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science 229, 476-484. (SCI, EI) [Full Text]

2. Chern, M.J., Hsu, P.H., Cheng, Y.J., Tseng, P.Y. and Hu, C.M. 2013 Numerical study on cavitation occurrence in globe valve. Journal of Energy Engineering (ASCE) 139, 25-34. (SCI, EI) [Full Text]

3. Chern, M.J., Wang, C.C., and Ma, C.H. 2007 Performance test and flow visualization of ball valve. Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 31, 505-512. [Full Text]

4. Chern, M.J. and Wang, C.C. 2004 Control of volumetric flowrate using a V-port. Journal of Fluids Engineering 126, 471-481. [Full Text]

5. Chern, M.J. and Wang, C.C. 2004 Effects of control devices on flows in ball valve. Transactions of the Aeronautic and Astronautical Society of the Republic of China 36, 291-300. [Full Text]

Figure 1 Cavitation inside a ball valve. (C.C. Wang)

Figure 2 Comparison between numerical and experimental results. (C.C. Wang)

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E-mail: mjchern@mail.ntust.edu.tw