Valve is a very important unit in pipeline system. The valve flow fluctuation brings about structural vibration and unpopular noise, and even leads to the safety problems and disasters. In this paper, a special no-load running check valve is investigated. The check valve is structural complex with one inlet and two outlets. It can be simplified as a spring-mass system which manipulates the flow rate by combine action of the ambient pressure of medium and the spring deformation.
The three-dimensional model of the valve is established and also the relationship between pressure drops and flow rate of the valve is obtained in various openings and operating conditions. The structure modals were verified by the field tests and thus its fixing boundaries are obtained correctly.
The mechanism causing self-excited vibration of a piping system is determined using a dynamic model which couples the hydraulics of internal flow with the structural motion of a three-ports passive check valve. The coupling is obtained by making the fluid flow coefficient at the check valve to be a function of valve plug displacement. The results are compared with the experimental data, which verifies the correctness of the theoretical results.
It is shown that the special valve has its own hydraulic characteristics, which greatly influence its flow distribution as it has two outlets. It was also testified that the coupling between fluid and structure changes its natural frequencies and has a non-negligible impact on the pressure fluctuation while working.
