Baseline Design

In many technical applications the flow is controlled by valves of different shapes. The example below shows a poppet valve which controls the admixture of a purge gas in the bend pipe to air flowing through the straight pipe.

The objective of the project was to analyse the flow structure during the valve opening and closing period first and to identify where the main pressure drop occurs in a second step. In the final step an optimization has been performed to reduce the pressure drop for a prescribed inlet mass flow rate. A fully transient CFD Simulation with mesh motion has been setup. 

The following video shows the baseline valve design and the flow behaviour during the opening and closing period: 

‍

‍

The following video shows the streamlines in the pipes and around the valve. It can be seen that the maximum velocities occur around the valve poppet as expected. Furthermore a recirculation zone can be seen which leads to efficiency losses: 

‍

‍

Design Optimization

Based on our customers feedback we have built up a fully automated optimization case. The optimization included four geometrical parameters which have been varied simultaneously. The objective was to reduce the pressure drop (energy efficiency) while keeping the mass flow rate. The following video shows the results.

‍

‍