Predicting Hydraulic Valve Pressure Drop Using CFD

Commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code ANSYS/Flotran has been used to simulate hydraulic oil flow inside valves. The fluid flow inside valve is treated as turbulent and adiabatic or iso-thermal. The CFD simulations presented in this paper have been carried out for the purpose of predicting hydraulic oil flow pressure drop inside hydraulic valves under certain operating conditions with the aim to minimize the pressure losses. The complete simulation procedure will be presented from parametric geometry creation with a 3-D solid CAD through final post-processing of results. Simulation results of different multiple-spool monoblock hydraulic valves are included. CFD simulation results are compared to experimental results. Some CFD model mesh sensitivity analysis result is also presented.