Abstract
Since the interior shape of a pressure regulator is complex and the change of fluid resistance at each operation condition is rapid and big, the pressure regulator can become the major factor that causes big loss in pipelines. So the suitable pressure regulator modeling by each operation condition is important to obtain reliable results especially in small scale pipeline network analysis. And in order to prevent the condensation and freezing problems, it is needed to confirm both whether temperature recovery is achieved after passing by the pressure regulator's narrow neck and how much amount of low temperature area that can cause condensate accumulation is distributed by various PCV models at every inlet-outlet pressure ratio. In this research, the numerical model resembling P company pressure regulator that is used widely for high pressure range in commercial, is adopted as the base model of CFD analysis to investigate pressure regulator's flow characteristics at each pressure ratio. Additionally it is also introduced to examine pressure regulator's critical flow characteristics and possibility of condensation or freezing at each pressure ratio. Furthermore, the comparison between the results of CFD analysis and the results of analytic solution obtained by compressible fluid-dynamics theory is attempted to validate the results of CFD modeling in this study and to estimate the accuracy of theoretical approach at each pressure ratio too.
