Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Computers & Fluids

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / c o m p fl u i d

CFD analysis with uidstructure interaction of opening high-pressure safety valves

A. Beune, J.G.M. Kuerten , M.P.C. van Heumen
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A multi-mesh numerical valve model has been developed to analyze the opening characteristic of high-
Received 11 March 2011 pressure safety valves. Newtons law and the CFD result for the ow force are used to model the move-
Received in revised form 26 October 2011 ment of the valve. In incompressible transient ow simulations a large force rise and collapse is caused by
Accepted 16 May 2012
a redirection of the bulk ow. This ow-history effect cannot be incorporated in a quasi-steady approach.
Available online 24 May 2012
For real-gases at a set pressure of 40 bar oscillations have been observed during closing of the valve. They
are caused by the interaction between the ow in the cavity of the valve disk and the ow towards the
Keywords:
valve outlet. At a higher set pressure the ow force continually decreases, which indicates that only a suf-
Computation
Fluid mechanics
ciently fast inlet pressure rise forces the valve to open. With this tool the operation characteristics of
Safety safety valves can be assessed to optimize the valve design.
Simulation 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction During valve opening a complex ow pattern is formed be-

Worldwide there are many industrial applications of high-
pressure safety devices, such as safety valves or rupture disks, in
the range between 250 and 3600 bar set pressure. Examples are
the production of synthesis gas or low-density polyethylene. Exist-
ing standards, such as EN ISO 4126-1 [6], do not cover this pressure
range and test facilities for an experimental determination of mass
ow capacities and opening characteristics are not available.
The aim of this paper is to study the inuence of valve dynamics
on steady ow performance by means of numerical methods. The
approach is to include uidstructure interaction (FSI) in computa-
tional uid dynamics (CFD) calculations of ow through a safety
valve. Then the opening characteristic of a high-pressure safety
valve and possible valve instabilities can be distinguished, which
may not become apparent in simulations with steady ows in
non-moving meshes. As a result, the design of a safety valve can
be evaluated and improved to avoid ow instabilities during valve
operation as much as possible.
A spring-loaded safety relief valve consists of a compression
spring, which presses the valve spindle with disk on the valve seat
in order to seal the pressurized system in case of operating condi-
tions below the valve set pressure. Such a safety valve is usually in-
stalled on top of the pressurized system, like a vessel, to be
protected and directly connected to the system through a short
pipe. Fig. 1 shows on the left the set up of such a vessel with safety
valve and on the right a construction drawing of the safety valve.
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: j.g.m.kuerten@tue.nl (J.G.M. Kuerten).
tween the valve seat and spindle with disk. In this region with
the smallest ow cross-sectional area the geometry forces the ow
to be accelerated up to the smallest cross-sectional area and to be
deected. The numerical method should sufciently accurately
represent challenging ow phenomena, such as real-gas effects,
choking below the valve disk and ow separation.
The opening characteristics in valves have previously been
investigated with CFD in preliminary studies of Domagaa [5] and
Srikanth and Bashker [14]. These studies showed that it is possible
to dene a single deformable grid that can cover the whole operat-
ing range with sufcient accuracy. FSI has already been used in
practical engineering problems of a vacuum relief valve [10], where
the design was improved to avoid the tendency of the valve to ut-
ter under expected subcritical gas ow conditions. The problem was
solved with two grids that interact with each other by an overset
mesh module. In another design optimization study [7] the closing
characteristics of a subsurface safety valve operating in productive
gas wells have been qualitatively analyzed in combination with
eld tests. Third, the performance of a stirling cycle machine [8]
has been more accurately predicted than in the traditional approach
with analytical models on a single moving grid.
The problem of reduced grid quality has been tackled in an FSI
study of multiple grids for high-speed ows in a pneumatic valve
[4]. It has been shown that dynamic ow effects become signicant
for a predened piston movement in a critical gas ow. Due to
large deformations of the computational domain intermediate
meshes are necessary to keep the mesh quality appropriate.
In simulations with a single moving grid in each iteration of the
solution process the positions of the mesh nodes are adjusted to
the new geometry while preserving the mesh quality parameters

0045-7930/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compuid.2012.05.010
 A. Beune et al. / Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116
safety valve
vessel
Fig. 1. Process diagram (left) and construction drawing (right) of a high-pressure safety valve.
orthogonality, expansion and aspect ratio as much as possible. In
this process the mesh topology remains the same, because no
nodes can be added or connections can be changed. Simulations
with a single deforming grid are common practice for small mesh
deformations. In case of large mesh deformations the application of
a single deforming grid would lead to too large stretching of some
cells in the computational domain. The resulting poor mesh quality
would result in large discretization errors or failure of the numer-
ical solver. Therefore, a multiple grid approach is necessary in such
a situation.
In the case of a high-pressure safety valve the deformation of
the grid will not only be large, but also the geometry at the small-
est cross-section is complex so that multiple grids are necessary.
Furthermore, it is desirable to model the valve opening starting
from a closed position, which needs special attention to the grid
quality as well. The second challenge is to minimize discretization
errors that occur in the transfer of the solution variables between
two grids with different topology. In order to reduce geometrical
complexity and to limit calculation time the research described
here is restricted to axially symmetric ow simulations. The inten-
tion of this work is to show that the principle of the method pro-
posed here works well and that it enables an increase in the
understanding of the physical processes that play a role during
the opening and closing of a safety valve. The geometry used in
the simulations is based on a commercial proportional spring-
loaded high-pressure safety valve manufactured by BASF SE.
In the next section the numerical model parameters are pre-
sented. In Section 3 results of an opening valve are given for liquid
and for gas ow. The results are analyzed with the focus on pres-
sure and velocity distributions. In the last section conclusions are
presented.
109
2. Numerical approach
First the mathematical models to model the valve movement
and ow dynamics, such as the real-gas equation of state are intro-
duced. Then, the discretization method is presented followed by
the solution strategy of the valve model with FSI.
2.1. Mathematical models
When a closed safety valve with seat area A0 is pressurized at a
certain set pressure pset for which the valve just starts to open, the
spring force Fspring and gravity force Fgravity are in equilibrium with
the ow force Fow that is the set pressure multiplied with the seat
area. Fig. 2 shows the forces that act on a moving spindle with a
disk of a safety valve.
The initial displacement h0 of the compression spring with stiff-
ness kspring equals
pset A0
h0 : 1
kspring
of the spindle with disk during valve move-
The acceleration h
ment is given by Newtons law as
F flow  kspring h h0  mspindle g ;
h 2
mspindle
with mspindle the equivalent mass of the moving parts of the valve
and g the gravitational acceleration when the valve is operated in
vertical orientation. Friction forces due to small possible misalign-
ment of the valve spindle are expected to be small. Apart from
the moving spindle that deforms the computational domain, the
110 A. Beune et al. / Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116

to calculate the thermodynamic properties as functions of temper-

ature and pressure the EoS with the parameters for nitrogen is
combined with the specic heat capacity at constant pressure as
a function of temperature at one reference value of the pressure.
This is the minimum set of information from which all thermody-
namic quantities in the whole pressure and temperature range can
be derived in a thermodynamically consistent way, i.e. by obeying
the Maxwell relations.
The dynamic viscosity of nitrogen is dened according to the ri-
gid, non-interacting sphere model [11]. Its thermal conductivity is
dened according to the modied Euken model [11].

2.2. Discretization

To reduce computational time the safety valve model is reduced

to a 2 slice of the full three-dimensional safety valve model. The
horizontal outlet of this quasi axially-symmetrical model is re-
duced to obtain a similar outow area as in the three-dimensional
safety valve. Moreover, upstream inuences on the force on the
disk are likely to be small since the ow near the disk is supersonic.
The valve spindle consists of the truncated cone with an angle
of 40 that presses on the sharp edge of the valve seat. Fig. 3 illus-
Fig. 2. Force balance of moving valve spindle with disk. trates a mesh deformation dh, where the mesh cells at this edge
experience nearly only shear so that the mesh orthogonality be-
comes poor. This effect becomes even larger for more dense
thick steel walls of the high-pressure safety valve are considered
meshes with at least 10 cells in the smallest cross-section and at
rigid.
very small disk lifts in the order of the minimum required bound-
To describe the three-dimensional ow phenomena in a safety
ary layer thickness. The numerical method can only handle con-
valve, the conservation laws of mass, momentum and energy are
nected computational domains so that a closed valve has to be
numerically solved in the commercial software package ANSYS
approximated by a valve with small disk lift. This disk lift is chosen
CFX [1]. In order to model the effects of turbulence, the shear stress
to be 0.01 mm, which is only 1% of the nominal disk lift.
transport (SST) model [9] has been adopted, since of the available
Forces on the valve disk do not only lead to displacement of the
two-equation Reynolds-Averaged NavierStokes models in CFX, it
disk, but also to deformation of disk and spindle. Just before the
gives the best results [3,2]. The good performance of this turbu-
valve opens the spindle is deformed in the axial direction, since
lence model has been veried with benchmark simulations, such
the force exerted upon the disk by the gas or liquid is equal to
as a 1D shock tube, a two-dimensional supersonic ramp, axially
the spring force, but in opposite direction. Since the valve opens
symmetric real gas nozzle ows and two-dimensional and three-
proportionally, the change in deformation during the opening of
dimensional valve models, that represent relevant physical effects
the valve is relatively small. A characteristic additional ow force
occurring in high-pressure safety valves.
of 200 N and Youngs modulus of steel lead to an extra deformation
The conservation equations have to be completed with deni-
of the spindle of approximately 0.001 mm, which is small com-
tions of the uid properties in the form of an equation of state
pared to the nominal disk lift. Therefore, in this work deformation
(EoS). For gas ows at high pressures (or low temperatures) the
and the associated aerodynamic noise have not been taken into
gas cannot be considered to behave as a perfect gas anymore, so
account.
that the stagnation properties deviate from the calorically perfect
In order to cover the whole disk lift range of 3 mm, 17 grids are
gas approximation and have to be calculated from a real-gas EoS.
generated, which are structured in the region close to the smallest
For the gas ows described in this paper nitrogen has been ap-
cross-section where the largest ow gradients are located. An
plied. In order to calculate real-gas ows at pressures up to
unstructured hexahedral grid is used in the rest of the computa-
3600 bar with the CFD code the uid properties have to be known
tional domain. Unstructured hexahedral grids are used to have
at temperatures between 100 and 6000 K and pressures between
the best compromise between geometrical exibility and the pos-
0.01 and 10000 bar. These ranges are so large, since during the iter-
sibility to rene the mesh locally without deteriorating the mesh
ation process large uctuations are possible. Therefore, look-up ta-
quality.
bles with the thermodynamic properties specic heat at constant
pressure cp, specic volume t, specic heat at constant volume
cv, pressure-specic volume derivative at constant temperature
@p


@t T
, speed of sound a, specic enthalpy h, specic entropy s, dy-
namic viscosity l and thermal conductivity k have to be generated.
In the look-up tables the temperature is linearly divided and the
pressure logarithmically into 400 intervals each.
The cubic RedlichKwong (RK) EoS relates pressure to temper-
ature and specic volume of a supercritical gas. This equation was
extended by Soave [13] for improved accuracy for larger and polar
molecules. For many gases the coefcients of this EoS are well tab-
ulated and with the help of mixing rules it can also be applied to
gas mixtures, which is benecial for practical applicability of the
valve sizing models and the numerical tool. The equations to calcu- Fig. 3. Mesh deformation around safety valve seat of a grid with reduced mesh
late the thermodynamic property tables are given in [2,3]. In order density.
 A. Beune et al. / Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116
Fig. 4 shows an example of a grid at h = 0.89 mm. From the
smallest disk lift of 0.01 mm each grid is predened with a factor
1.5 larger disk lift compared to the previous one resulting in the
17 predened meshes in total. The smallest nodal distance of the
mesh with disk lift h = 0.01 mm is 0.001 mm which increases up
to 0.025 mm for the larger meshes. The meshes have approxi-
mately 42,000 nodes. For a small part of a simulation with only
two subsequent predened meshes a grid convergence study has
been performed, in which four sets of grids with approximately
8000, 16,000, 42,000 and 100,000 nodes. The results for ow force
and valve displacement on the coarsest mesh differ considerably
from the ner meshes, whereas the results on the two ner grids
almost collapse. Therefore, the grid with approximately 42,000
points has been selected for the full analysis of the valve
movement.
2.3. Solution strategy
In the CFD software package ANSYS CFX the numerical discret-
ization is node based and it uses shape functions to evaluate the
derivatives for the pressure gradient term and the diffusion terms
in the momentum, continuity and turbulence equations. The Na-
vierStokes equations are discretized in a collocated way and
solved by an algebraic multigrid solver. To avoid pressurevelocity
decoupling, a robust interpolation scheme similar to RhieChow
interpolation [12] is used. CFX solves the conservation equations
of mass and momentum in one system of equations, with all equa-
tions being fully coupled [1]. The turbulence equations are solved
coupled as well and the energy equation is solved separately.
CFX uses advection schemes such as rst-order upwind differ-
ences and numerical advection with a specied blend factor. This
blend factor can be varied between 0 and 1 to vary between a rst-
and second-order differencing scheme and to control numerical
diffusion. The high-resolution scheme option will be chosen, which
maintains the blend factor as closely as possible to 1 without vio-
lating the boundedness principle that could result in non-physical
oscillations in the solution. For the turbulence equations the rst-
order accurate scheme is sufcient. The grid convergence study
mentioned in the previous subsection indicated that the order of
accuracy of the discretization method is sufcient for the purpose
of this research. In unsteady simulations a second-order accurate
linear multi step method is applied for the time integration of
Fig. 4. Front surface of axially symmetric computational domain of safety valve for h = 0.89 mm.
111
the mass, momentum and energy equation, while a rst-order
backward Euler scheme is applied for the turbulence equations.
All inlet and outlet boundaries have subsonic conditions. Hence,
at an inlet boundary the total pressure and total temperature are
prescribed, while at an outlet boundary the static pressure is pre-
scribed. The walls of the high-speed ow are considered adiabatic.
A simulation with multiple moving meshes starts with the def-
inition le with basic solver parameters and one predened non-
deformed mesh that is consistent with the valve disk displacement
dened in the denition le. The rst simulation is initialized with
the solution of a steady ow simulation at the same initial disk lift
with velocity zero. When during a simulation a second mesh is
loaded additional parameters such as the spindle velocity and ow
force are updated from the previous simulation to the CFX Com-
mand Language (CCL).
A series of simulations with different predened meshes, the
communication of the variables necessary for the calculation of
the valve displacement and the export of the solution variables
for postprocessing are controlled with Perl scripts.
As part of each time step rst the mesh movement during the
next time step is evaluated, where the acceleration of the disk h n
is determined from the valve displacement hn and ow force F nflow
by
n n
n F flow  kspring h h0  mspindle g :
h 3
mspindle
Then the displacement of the disk hn+1 at the next time step
becomes
n1 1 n 2
h h_ n Dt h
n
h Dt ; 4
2
where Dt is the time step and h_ n is the velocity of the disk.
Moreover,
h_ n1 h_ n h
n Dt: 5
After the mesh movement the simulation time step size is eval-
uated. In order to minimize errors in the interpolation of the
numerical solution to the next predened mesh, the disk lift on
the previous mesh should be as close as possible to the predened
112 A. Beune et al. / Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116

disk lift of the next mesh. In order to achieve equality of these two
disk lifts within 1 nm, the time step size is changed with not more
than 1% between a minimum and maximum value.
The time step in the simulations has been optimized in order to
have a good balance between calculation time and accuracy. It
turned out that a time step size of 2  105 s for incompressible
ow and of 2  106 s for compressible ow lead to solutions in
which the disk lift and ow force on the disk are practically inde-
pendent of the time step size. These values of the time step result
in up to eight coefcient loops of the linear solver per time step
after a few time steps after interpolation of the solution variables
from a deformed mesh onto a new predened mesh. The inner
coefcient loop terminates when the maximum residuals of the
mass, momentum and energy transport equations become below
103 or after 50 iterations.
All dynamic valve simulations have been performed on a single
core of an Intel Xeon 5130 dual-core processor at a clock rate of
2 GHz. For the incompressible ow simulations the computational
time is 8 days for a simulation time of 0.1 s. For the compressible
ow simulations a time span of 0.01 s could be simulated within
8 days.
At time t = 0 s the mass ow rate equals m _ 0:013 kg=s, which
is comparable to a leaking safety valve. In the rst 3 ms the ow
force remains constant although the disk lift increases to 0.2 mm.
In the rst part of the valve opening the acceleration forces domi-
nate the valve movement. At t = 8 ms and disk lift h = 1.13 mm the
ow force drops relatively fast to half of its maximum value in only
0.3 ms. This results in decelerating of the valve spindle.
The oscillations of the ow force during the rst few iterations
of a new simulation with a predened mesh are small, as can be
seen in Fig. 6. These oscillations, if present, reduce within 10 time
steps to zero and, therefore, do not affect the total behavior of the
ow force. Especially for incompressible ows the ow force is
sensitive to small interpolation errors and inaccuracies that occur
during initialization of the simulation.
The change in direction of the ow in this time period is visual-
ized in four vector plots of the velocity eld around the lifting-aid
in Fig. 7. It can be seen that at t = 7.2 ms and h = 0.89 mm the ow
remains attached to the valve cone and directly impinges on the

3. Results

In this section several typical simulation results will be shown

and analyzed. In the rst subsection the results of the numerical
model of an opening valve with liquid ow are presented. In partic-
ular, velocity and pressure distributions will be analyzed. The re-
sults are also compared with results of a quasi-static approach.
In the next subsection the results of an FSI simulation of an open-
ing valve with gas ow at 40 and 400 bar set pressure are pre-
sented and discussed.
Fig. 6. Flow force as function of time of simulation with liquid water at pinlet = 44.
The dashed vertical lines correspond to the times of a new mesh.
3.1. Liquid valve ow

Fig. 5 shows results of transient simulations with multiple

meshes of the axially symmetric safety valve with liquid ow.
The simulation started on the predened mesh at disk lift
h = 0.01 mm, with an initial spring force based on a set pressure
of pset = 40 bar and spring stiffness kspring = 25328 N/m, a constant
10% overpressure at the inlet pinlet = 44 bar, outlet pressure 1 bar,
equivalent mass of the moving components mdisk = 0.7662 kg and u [m/s]
simulation time step size Dt = 2  105 s. The valve opens to 100
approximately its maximum disk lift of 3 mm.

75

t = 0.0072 s t = 0.0076 s
50

25

t = 0.0089 s t = 0.0106 s

Fig. 5. Disk lift, ow force and mass ow rate versus time of an FSI simulation with Fig. 7. Vector plots of velocity eld of water ow at four different simulation times
liquid water at pinlet = 44 bar. at pinlet = 44 bar.
 A. Beune et al. / Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116 113

bottom of the cavity. Then at t = 7.6 ms and h = 1 mm the ow

starts to detach from the valve cone and the circulating bulk ow
moves away from the bottom of the cavity. At t = 8.9 ms and
h = 1.39 mm the ow has completely detached and impinges on
the tip of the lifting-aid with three vortices in the cavity. Finally,
at t = 10.6 ms and h = 1.75 mm, two vortices remain in the cavity
and the ow has stabilized again. After the jump in force the disk
lift almost reaches the mechanical stop at 3 mm, but the ow force
recovers only slowly to its initial value. Up to t = 0.1 s no further
force discontinuities have been observed.
Fig. 8 shows the forces on different parts of the wall of the spin-
dle that signicantly contribute to the total force on the valve as a
function of time. Only the parts of the wall with forces larger than
1 N are plotted. This gure clearly shows the fast change of the
force distribution over the wall as a function of time. At t = 0 s only
the truncated cone (part 1 and 2) contributes to the ow force. Di-
rectly after opening, the cavity of the lifting-aid (part 4) starts to
compensate for the reduced force on the truncated cone. At
t = 8 ms the tip of the cavity (part 6) only partly recovers the col-
Fig. 9. Comparison between transient and quasi-steady simulation results for
lapse of the force on the lifting-aid. liquid ow at pset = 40 bar and pinlet = 44 bar. Solid line: transient simulation, dashed
In order to determine the inuence of the ow dynamics on the line: quasi-steady simulation.
valve characteristic, the previously described transient simulation
with constant operating pressure pinlet = 44 bar is compared with
a so-called quasi-steady simulation. In this simulation steady-state to zero in the calculation of the ow force in the quasi-steady sim-
solutions are calculated on all predened meshes, i.e. for 17 xed ulation. The results of both simulation shows that the difference be-
values of the disk lift. The results are converted to the time domain tween the ow force in the two approaches, DF is correlated with
the velocity of the disk h._ For example for 0.017 s < t < 0.033 s the
by solving the valve dynamics Eqs. (3) and (4) with values of the
disk force interpolated between the steady-state solutions starting ow force in the transient simulation is larger than in the quasi-
at t = 0 s, initial velocity h_ 0 m=s and initial spring displacement steady approach, while the disk velocity is negative. This damping
h0 that is exactly the same as used in the transient simulation with would be even larger when friction effects of the spindle pressing
multiple meshes. For the whole time domain the disk lifts are cal- on the guide box are taken into account. In a comparison between
culated and the corresponding mass ow rates and ow forces are the two approaches where the set pressure and overpressure are in-
interpolated. creased by a factor of ve, the differences in results are similar.
In Fig. 9 the results of both approaches are compared. Up to the At a valve disk lift of around 1 mm the differences between the
highest disk lift, the disk lift and the mass ow rate can be well quasi-steady solution and the transient solution are large. As pre-
approximated by the steady-state solutions. However, the large rise viously observed in the analysis of the velocity distributions
and collapse of the ow force found in the transient simulation is around the spindle in Fig. 7, a change in the orientation of the ow
not obtained in the quasi-steady simulation. Fortunately, this results in a sudden change in distribution of the ow forces acting
hardly inuences the mass ow rate and ow force at later times. on the individual parts of the spindle wall. The differences in the
Furthermore, when the valve closes again the valve oscillations velocity eld of the ow become more apparent when comparing
are damped in the transient simulation, whereas the quasi-steady a solution of the quasi-steady approach with the transient one at
approach results in an undamped oscillatory motion of the spindle. the same disk lift h = 0.89 mm, which is shown in Fig. 10.
This different behavior can be explained in the following way. In In the results of the steady simulation in the left of Fig. 10 two
equation of motion (2) a damping term would have the form bh_ clear strong vortices are present and the bulk ow directly im-
with b > 0. From a physical point of view, the damping accounts pinges on the edge of the lifting-aid. In the right gure, which
for ow-history effects and the velocity of the valve, which is equal shows the transient simulation results at the same disk lift, the

Fig. 8. Contributions of the signicant parts of the walls of the disk to the total ow force versus time of an FSI simulation with liquid water at pinlet = 44 bar.
114 A. Beune et al. / Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116
u [m/s]
100
75
50
25
Fig. 10. Vector plots of quasi-steady (left) and transient (right) velocity eld for water ow at pinlet = 44 bar and h = 0.89 mm.
ow remains attached to the truncated cone and completely ows
into the cavity of the lifting-aid, inducing a larger total ow force. It
is clear that in the transient approach the ow does not have time
to relax so that the redirection of the ow pattern is delayed. This
has a large impact on the ow force. This ow-history effect cannot
be incorporated in the quasi-steady approach.
3.2. Gas valve ow
Fig. 11 shows results of transient simulations with multiple
meshes of the axially symmetric safety valve with nitrogen gas.
The simulation started on a predened mesh with disk lift
h = 0.01 mm, initial spring force based on a set pressure pset = 40 -
bar and spring stiffness kspring = 25328 N/m, a constant 10% over-
pressure at the inlet pinlet = 44 bar, inlet temperature Tinlet = 300 K,
outlet pressure 1 bar, equivalent mass of the moving components
mdisk = 0.7662 kg and time step size Dt = 2  106 s. Due to higher
ow velocities the time step size is smaller by a factor of 10 than
in the simulations presented in the previous subsection.
The force jump previously observed in the liquid simulations al-
ready occurs at t = 1 ms and h = 0.035 mm. This detachment of the
ow from the valve cone does not lead to such large ow force
Fig. 11. Disk lift, ow force and mass ow rate versus time of an FSI simulation
with nitrogen gas at pset = 40 bar. Solid line: transient simulation, dashed line:
quasi-steady simulation.
changes because the disk velocity is low. Nevertheless, the initial
increase of the ow force provokes rapid and stable opening of
the valve. At t = 22 ms the valve is almost closed and the ow starts
to behave irregularly with high-frequent valve oscillations around
25 ms.
This oscillatory behavior is illustrated in Fig. 12. It shows two
vector plots generated at two opposite extrema of the ow force.
In the left plot the ow in the cavity has a low velocity, resulting
in almost no contribution of the cavity to the ow force. In the right
plot the ow has changed its direction and the supersonic area with
bow shock is smaller, because the ow impinges on the cavity edge
with less space to expand. Two strong vortices are present in the
cavity leading to a signicant contribution to the ow force. When
the valve opens again the ow oscillations damp out.
It is noted that this unstable ow behavior cannot always be
avoided in valve design. It is important that the traveling time of
pressure waves moving from the outlet to the valve should not be-
come close to a multiple value of the eigenfrequency of the valve.
This interaction could induce oscillatory behavior of the valve disk
which is called valve chatter. In this simulation this cannot be
shown, because the computational domain is too small resulting
in too small traveling times. Finally, the damping in this simulation
is very low. This shows that ow-history effects are unimportant
and implies that this low-pressure safety valve can be well simu-
lated in a quasi-steady approach. The quasi-steady simulation re-
sults included in Fig. 11 are indeed in good agreement with the
transient results.
It is also important that the frequency of the oscillatory behav-
ior observed in Fig. 12 is not close to the frequency of longitudinal
waves in the spindle. The eigen frequency of these waves can be in-
ferred from the stiffness of the spindle and its mass, resulting in a
frequency of 45,000 Hz. This is larger than the frequency observed
in Fig. 12 by a factor of 4. This also shows that spindle deformation
can be ignored in the present simulations.
Fig. 13 shows the results of FSI simulations of nitrogen gas ow
at a 10 times higher set pressure of pset = 400 bar, 10 times higher
spring stiffness of kspring = 253280 N/m, constant 10% overpressure
at the inlet of pinlet = 440 bar and the same temperature, outlet
pressure, equivalent mass of the moving components and time
step size as the previously presented gas ow simulation.
In this simulation the force always decreases as the valve opens,
which results in a permanent detachment of the ow from the
valve cone. Furthermore, due to a high disk velocity h_ the damping
is larger and the ow history effects have a larger contribution to
the ow force. Indeed, the transient simulation results differ more
 A. Beune et al. / Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116 115

u [m/s]
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0

Fig. 12. Vector plots at the time of minimum (left) and maximum (right) of oscillatory force of an FSI simulation with nitrogen gas at pset = 40 bar.

at pset = 40 and 400 bar is made. The dimensionless force is dened

as the actual ow force divided by the product of inlet pressure pin-
let and valve seat area A0. The rst measurement point is at
h = 0.01 mm. It can be seen that for liquid ow the force increases
during a longer time span than for gas ows. Furthermore, this ap-
proach reveals the differences between the forces just when the
valve opens. In the rst 0.1 mm the ow force determines the
opening characteristic of a safety valve. As a result, this comparison
can be used as an indication for determination of the opening char-
acteristic of a safety valve.

4. Conclusion

A CFD tool with uidstructure interaction has been designed

Fig. 13. Disk lift, ow force and mass ow rate versus time of an FSI simulation
with nitrogen gas at pset = 400 bar. Solid line: transient simulation, dashed line:
quasi-steady simulation.
Fig. 14. Comparison of dimensionless ow forces of steady valve ow calculations
of liquid and gas valve ow to 1 mm disk lift (left) and zoomed to 0.1 mm disk lift
(right).
from the quasi-steady results, which are also included in Fig. 13,
than in the previous case. Since the ow force continually de-
creases during opening, this valve will respond fast only when
the pressure increase rate is sufciently high, so that the inertia
of the spindle moves the valve to an open position while the pres-
sure at the inlet increases.
In Fig. 14 a comparison of the dimensionless ow force of the
steady ow calculations of liquid ow at pset = 40 bar and gas ow
for analysis of the opening characteristics of high-pressure safety
valves. To model these complex geometries from closing position
to nominal disk lift several predened meshes are necessary to
cover the mesh deformation without deteriorating the mesh qual-
ity. Especially the attention to the transfer of the solution variables
to the next predened mesh has resulted in a feasible solution
method for both incompressible and real-gas ows.
The inclusion of FSI in incompressible valve ows has led to
new insights in valve dynamics that cannot be observed by a stea-
dy-state approach. It is emphasized that in the case of incompress-
ible uids the absence of damping or the ability to absorb pressure
waves by the ow poses higher demands on accurate transfer of
the solution variables to a new mesh. In addition, the mass ow
rate and the disk lift are less affected by large variations of the disk
force. However, a redirection of the ow could be induced by trav-
eling pressure waves and subsequently lead to unstable valve
operation when occurring close to a multiple value of the valve
eigenfrequency.
The implementation of real-gas dynamics described by the SRK
EoS in the CFD model with FSI has led to simulation results which
exhibit ow oscillations when the valve is almost closed. Analysis
has shown that the ow interacts with the vortices in the cavity
which change direction. Furthermore, also the size of the super-
sonic area and the position of the bow shock show oscillatory
behavior. This behavior can lead to valve chatter when pressure
waves travel at a multiple value of the valve eigenfrequency.
At high-pressure valve ows, real-gas effects become apparent
and lead to a decreasing force when the valve opens. This implies
that the rate of pressure increase at the valve inlet becomes more
important, because it is expected that this valve will respond fast
only when the pressure increase rate is sufciently high. The open-
ing characteristics of a safety valve is determined in the rst
0.1 mm. Therefore, it is recommended to use the presented FSI
116 A. Beune et al. / Computers & Fluids 64 (2012) 108116
multimesh method to investigate the sensitivity to valve dynamics
and the steady ow method at small disk lifts to determine the
opening characteristics. The outcome of such investigation can be
used for the optimization of valve design. Moreover, Beune et al.
[3] have shown that dynamic simulations provide insight into
the cause of deviations in the ow force between experimental re-
sults and numerical results based on steady simulations.
Acknowledgements
The departments Safety & Fluid Flow Technology and Valves
and Fittings (Metal Processing) of company BASF SE in Ludwigsha-
fen (Germany) are acknowledged for funding this research.
References
[1] ANSYS. Manual ANSYS CFX, Release 11.0. Canonsburg; 2006.
[2] Beune A. Analysis of high-pressure safety valves. Ph.D. thesis, TU Eindhoven,
the Netherlands; 2009.
[3] Beune A, Kuerten J, Schmidt J. Numerical calculation and experimental
validation of safety valve ows at pressures up to 600 bar. AIChE J 2011;22.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aic.12534.
[4] Brk E. Numerische Strmungsberechnung ergnzt durch experimentelle
Methoden zur Untersuchung pneumatischer Strmungen. Ph.D. thesis, TU
Dresden, Germany; 2006.
[5] Domagaa M. Cfd analysis of pilot operating relief valve. Czasopismo
Techniczne, wydawnictwo politechniki Krakowshiej z. 3-M; 2008.
[6] ISO. EN ISO 4126-1:2004. Safety devices for protection against excessive
pressure. Part 1: safety valves. Berlin: Beuth Verlag GmbH; 2004.
[7] Li L, Zang H, Davis G, Kalb F, Hamid S. Improving the closing characteristics of
subsurface safety valve with combined FEA and CFD modeling/numerical
analysis. In: SPE western regional meeting; 2005.
[8] Mahkamov K. An axisymmetric computational uid dynamics approach to the
analysis of the working process of a solar stirling engine. J Sol Energy Eng
2006;128:4553.
[9] Menter F. Two-equation eddy-viscosity turbulence models for engineering
applications. AIAA J 1994;32:1598605.
[10] Reich A, Parthasarathy V, DiMeo A. Coupled uid-structure interaction
simulation of the opening of the target rock vacuum relief valve. ASME Publ
PVP 2001;424:238.
[11] Reid RC, Sherwood TK. The properties of gases and liquids. 2nd ed. New
York: McGraw-Hill; 1966.
[12] Rhie C, Chow W. Numerical study of the turbulent ow past an airfoil with
trailing edge separation. AIAA 1983;21:152532.
[13] Soave G. Equilibrium constants from a modied RedklichKwong equation of
state. Chem Eng Sci 1972;27:1197203.
[14] Srikanth C, Bashker C. Flow analysis in valve using moving grids through CFD
techniques. Adv Eng Softw 2009;40:193201.