Research on Cavitation Resistance by Vortex in Water Hydraulic Valves

Cavitation is a major failure in water hydraulic valve causing noise, vibration and destruction of material. Many experiments have found that bubbles are not easily formed and exploded near the vortex flow field. For reducing cavitation of water hydraulic valves, based on an original valve, 3 structures models about forming vortex flow field were designed including jet hole structure, spiral groove structure, and combining jet hole and spiral groove structure. Using a computational fluid dynamics approach, adopting to the Mixture model as multiphase flow model and the Full Cavitation model as cavitation model, the relationship between formation of cavitation bubbles and vortex flow field were numerically analyzed. The effects of vortex flow field and the structure forming it was simulated. Compared with original valves, formation and distribution of cavitation, the law of bubble mass transition, and analysis of different flow fields were discussed in this paper. This investigation shows that vortex flow field and the structure forming vortex flow field can improve cavitation resistance in water hydraulic valve.