CFD simulations inside hydraulic valves

Engineers from HUSCO studied the forces induced by oil flow on hydraulic valve actuators with the aim of minimizing their effects.

HUSCO started using ANSYS/FLOTRAN for hydraulic-oil-flow simulations in 1995. ANSYS/FLOTRAN, the CFD portion of ANSYS/Multiphysics, is a finite-element-method based simulation package. It can be used stand-alone for fluid-dynamics modeling or in coupled-field simulation with other modules of ANSYS to study different types of physical phenomena and their coupled impact on a design. Some common examples of coupled-field simulation in hydraulic applications include gasket deformation due to fluid pressure (fluid-structural) and solenoid actuation (electromagnetic-dynamics).

Hydraulic-oil-flow problems in valve applications are usually treated in terms of fluid dynamics as a Newtonian fluid flow (a fluid category where the oil deformation rate is assumed directly proportional to the applied shear stress), adiabatic or isothermal (no thermodynamic effects), and incompressible. The common characteristics of such hydraulic applications include a high pressure differential, a localized high-velocity gradient (especially for metering valves), occasional flow separation and reattachment (flow pattern change), and turbulent flow with a Reynolds number much higher than 5000.