I am pleased to share with you the live recording of my presentation, "Spring Loaded Safety Valve PowerFLOW Simulation" I held during the EuroMed SIMULIA Regional User meeting on September 14, 2022.

I am @NR, currently a Technical Director at Cofimco S.r.l., Italy.Comfico is a manufacturer of industrial fans.

I hold a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy. Before joining Comfico, I was  Technical Director at Cabi Cattaneo, Milan, and at Cosmos S.p.A., Livorno, both in Italy and companies operating in the military submarines field. My main activities were propeller and pressure hull design, hydrodynamics, pneumatic and hydraulic systems, and mechanics and dynamics of structures.

Abstract:

In the field of spring-loaded safety valve operating with compressible fluids, the main issue to take care of is the supersonic flow through the valve orifice, particularly when the inlet pressure grows to bring the pressure ratio above the critical value. The high Mach number (M≈2.0) reached by the flow required a CFD simulation means being able to evaluate the flow in such demanding conditions. PowerFLOW showed the right features to fit the activity.

The CFD activity was aimed to define the behavior of the force acting on the seal disc and the disc holder for different disc strokes (orifice openings) and inlet pressures up to above 800,000 Pa. The knowledge of such a relation is the basis for the choice and setting of a proper spring characteristic and spring preload to keep the opening pressure and the reseating pressure within the values required by the related standards, usually +10% / - 5%.

PowerFLOW simulations have been of great help in tuning the loading spring (Fig. 1) and verifying the valve flow coefficient (Fig. 2) for several orifice openings, as proved by several tests carried out on real-scale valves atPolitecnico di Milano 

Slides:

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Recording: