Study of Performance Characteristics of a Triple Duty Valve using CFD

A triple duty valve is used to control the functions such as on-off, throttling and non-return on the discharge side of hydronic pump systems. In this paper, computational fluid dynamic techniques are used to simulate the 2 inch triple duty valve performance characteristics for various stroke lengths with uniform outgoing velocity. The performance characteristics such as flow coefficient and pressure loss coefficient for triple duty valve are calculated for different stroke lengths (8 mm, 12 mm and 20 mm) through simulation. Numerical simulation is conducted to study effect of various Reynolds number and valve openings on the performance characteristics of triple duty valve. The permanent pressure loss coefficient and its dependence on Reynolds number is computed and analyzed respectively so that the recovery of pressure after passage through valve could be quantitatively understood. The comparison of flow pattern at different stroke length is investigated. Pressure drop across the triple duty valve and formation of vortex flow after the valve section have been discussed. Magnitude of flow coefficient, pressure loss coefficient and permanent pressure loss coefficient calculated through numerical analysis are compared with the experimental results. Furthermore, this study can be used for the evaluation of performance characteristics of triple duty valve at different sizes