CFD SIMULATION OF A HYDRAULIC SERVO VALVE WITH TURBULENT FLOW AND CAVITATION

In this paper the internal f ow in a hydraulic servo valve was investigated. The objectives of this research work were to investigate he turbulent flow and the cavitation phenomenon in the valve by using numerical simulation method in the form of CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics). The geometry of this valve is described by a 3D model and hybrid mesh elements---tetrahedron and hexahedron---are applied to generate the necessary computational meshes for the further calculation. Using the CFD commercial code FLUENT, the internal flow was studied for the turbulent flow situation. In addition, cavitation phenomenon was also investigated with the multiphase model and standard k-c turbulence model. Simulation results show that the flow in this valve is characteristically turbulent and he cavitation emerges actually in the small gap region between the spool and the valve base