Enhanced stability of pressure relief valves: mechanistic design and analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel valve design that significantly improves stability by preventing flutter-induced chatter, using a combination of numerical modeling and dynamical systems analysis to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Contribution

A new valve design concept that enhances stability by immediate upper-limit opening and reduced lift, analyzed through advanced numerical and dynamical systems methods.

Findings

The new design prevents flutter instability in pressure relief valves.

Numerical models confirm improved stability with the proposed design.

Stable operation achieved despite inherent instability in traditional valves.

Abstract

Pressure-relief valves, often the critical last line of defence in process engineering, are known to be susceptible to valve chatter. Such behaviour has been shown to arise from a flutter instability, or Hopf bifurcation, associated with the fundamental, quarter-wave acoustic mode of their inlet piping. Here, a novel design concept is proposed and analyzed for eliminating this instability. The concept involves using an oversized valve with reduced lift and adopting a discharge characteristic that enhances the blow-down effect, so that the valve opens immediately to its upper lift limit upon reaching set pressure. The concept is demonstrated numerically using an updated version of a 1D fluid pipe dynamics mathematical model solved using a Lax-Wendroff method. Stability properties are analysed using dynamical systems theory, applied to an improved reduced-order modal model. It is shown how the valve settles to a stable so-called pseudo equilibrium, in contact with the upper stop, provided the coefficient of restitution of is not too large. Such stable operation is reached despite the equivalent regular valve being unstable to the quarter-wave Hopf bifurcation. Parameter studies using the reduced-order model demonstrate the extent of the enhanced stability effect, which is confirmed using the full model for the case of gas service valves.