SPH simulation of the flow in a spring safety valve

The simulation of the transient flow during the opening of a spring safety valve is obtained by Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics. A Weakly Compressible SPH formulation with an explicit time integration scheme is adopted. The method is applied to the analysis of an industrial safety valve, showing the different valve behaviours and the different flow patterns which can occur when varying the total pressure at the valve inlet. In particular, it is shown that partial opening may occur when the inlet total pressure is almost equal to the threshold pressure of the valve: the plug reaches an intermediate travel and then closes, leading to an intermittent jet in the orifice between the nozzle and the plug itself. At slightly higher inlet total pressures, the safety valve shows its correct behaviour: the plug reaches its maximum travel in a finite time and a steady radial jet flows along the plug surface to the outlet valve section.