A Numerical Study on the Flow Characteristics through an Industrial Safety Relief Valve

In this paper, the flow characteristics through an industrial safety relief valve used to protect the crankcase room in a large-sized marine engine have been numerically investigated using the moving-mesh strategy. With the room pressure higher than the cracking one, the spring-loaded disc becomes open and then the air in the room blows off into the atmosphere, resulting in the reduction of the room pressure and then the shutoff of the disc. Numerical simulations are performed on the compressible air flow through the relief valve (${\phi}160mm$) with the initial room pressure (0.11 bar or 0.12bar) higher than the cracking one (0.1 bar). The numerical method has been validated by comparing the results with the empirical ones. Results show that the disc motion and flow characteristics can be successfully simulated using the moving-mesh strategy and depend strongly on the spring stiffness and the flow passage shape. With increasing spring stiffness, the maximum disc displacement decreases and thus the total disc-opening time also decreases. In addition, the flow passage shape makes a significant effect on the velocity and direction of the flow.

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