Three-Dimensional Modeling and Geometrical Influence on the Hydraulic Performance of a Control Valve

The ability to understand and manage the performance of hydraulic control valves is important in many automatic and manual industrial processes. The use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) aids in the design of such valves by inexpensively providing insight into flow patterns, potential noise sources, and cavitation. Applications of CFD to study the performance of complex three-dimensional (3D) valves, such as poppet, spool, and butterfly valves, are becoming more common. Still, validation and accuracy remain an issue. The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations were solved numerically using the commercial CFD package FLUENT V6.2 to assess the effect of geometry on the performance of a …