Proposed Universal Method for Quantifying the Severity of a Cavitating Control Valve Service

Although the widely used Kc, cavitation index, (1) gives an “on/off” indication of whether or not a control valve will be experiencing cavitation, no universally accepted method exists to measure the damage potential of a cavitating condition in a control valve. This paper proposes such a method which allows users and vendors to quantify the service much the same as a Kv (Cv) calculation quantifies the capacity required. Once a numerical measure of the intensity of the service is calculated, then valve style and trim can be selected.