Turbulent compressible flow analysis on multi-stage high pressure reducing valve

Abstract Pressure reducing valve plays an important role in thermodynamic systems. Under extreme operating conditions, greater demands are requested on pressure reducing systems. In this paper, a novel multi-stage high pressure reducing valve (MSHPRV) is proposed, which can achieve multi-stage pressure reducing processes, improve the flow characteristics and deal with complex conditions. Here, the effects of different structural parameters on turbulent compressible flow inside MSHPRV are numerically investigated to achieve low valve noise and energy consumption. Mach number is taken as the parameter to reflect the fluid compressibility. Higher Mach number can cause serious aerodynamic noise and large amount of energy consumption. Based on this, transmission loss of MSHPRV is also studied to achieve better noise control performances. Meanwhile, larger turbulent dissipation rate means larger degree of energy consumption, so it is with the exergy loss. Thus, numerical models with different valve openings, perforated plate diameters, chamfer radii of perforated plates, pressure ratios and stages of perforated plates are established, and the effects of these structural parameters on the compressible turbulent flow and energy consumption of MSHPRV are investigated. Results show that different structural parameters have significant impacts on compressible turbulent flow and energy consumption performance in MSHPRV. The best noise control and least energy consumption of MSHPRV is achieved with such parameters as pressure ratio 7, perforated plate diameter 4 mm and 4 stage plates. This work can benefit the further research work on energy saving and multi-stage design of pressure reducing devices.