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Fluid Structural Interaction Study for a Low Reynolds Number, Low Gap Flow Across a Pressure Opening Spring Loaded Valve

The Pressure Flow Analysis of a spring-loaded valve is essential as part of its performance estimation for various practical applications. There are many similar studies done in applications like pressure safety devices in which flows are generally turbulent in nature. However, in the case of valve devices which are especially used in biomedical applications where the flow is generally laminar in nature and where viscous pressure drop plays a major role, the pressure drop mainly depends on the fluid properties like viscosity and the geometry of the flow path formed by the moving and stationary components of the valve at a particular equilibrium condition of the valve during a flow. In this study, the applicability of Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) tools available in CFD/CAE software is explored to solve the problem. The FSI tools couples the structural analysis with flow analysis. Along with the flow parameters like fluid viscosity and fluid density the structural parameters like spring Young's modulus, density and Poisson's ratio also form the engineering inputs. The general challenge involved in the usage of FSI or CFD tools is that a predefined flow path is to be defined and that the pressure opening valve models are practically in initially closed condition. In the case of flow across pressure safety valves which involves turbulent compressible flows, the design demands sufficiently more valve opening during operating condition, so that there is lot of freedom to give a design with an initial residual gap to run the simulation. However, in cases of valve flow with low Reynolds number and low velocity where the valve opening gaps are in the very few microns range and the ratio of the characteristic length scale of the gap, when compared to the dimension of opening components, is minute, the residual gap of even lower characteristic dimension is to be provided for the model imported for simulation which is disadvantageous when the requirement of mesh refinement is considered. This also creates concern about the accuracy of results since practically a minor variation in opening causes large change in pressure-flow values in such type of flow cases. To avoid this situation the initial flow model chosen is the valve components with a sufficiently considerable predefined gap provided with a spring preload equal to this predefined gap which replicates the valve close condition. The analysis is then done after coupling the structural conditions defined in this fashion with flow conditions. By performing the analysis in this fashion, the effective result is that of a valve with no spring preload and with a valve gap which is resulted only due to flow pressure. In the case of simulating the condition with practical spring preload, the preload defined in the simulation will be the addition of the practical preload and the predefined gap. A suitable spring geometry was also defined to provide the required stiffness. The analysis was done using this technique and the results were validated using the analytical model derived from geometrical aspects and Fluid properties with the use of Navier Stokes equation, and also the individual CFD and CAE studies and the reliability of the FSI technique to solve the design problem was established.

Document Details

ReferenceNWC23-0161-presentation
AuthorsGopinathan. A S Nair. S Muraleedharan C V
LanguageEnglish
TypePresentation
Date 16th May 2023
OrganisationSree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology
RegionGlobal

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