Evaluation of Numerical Model of a Ball Valve used for a Gas Pipeline

>> This paper presents on the evaluation of numerical analysis model of a ball valve used for a gas pipeline. The ball valve has important role to control the gas flow of the pipeline as well as safety operation to prevent gas explosion at the emergency. For the validation of numerical simulation, the computational domains are introduced three different types: a hexahedron chamber connected to a pipeline outlet without considering the geometry of pressure tubes, a pipeline only considered the geometry of pressure tubes, and a pipeline connected both of the a hexahedron chamber and pressure tubes. The commercial code, SC/Tetra, is introduced to solve the three-dimensional steady-state Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes analysis in the present study. The valve flow coefficient and valve loss coefficient with respect to the valve opening rate of 30%, 50%, and 70% are compared with experimental results. Throughout the numerical analysis for the three analysis domains, pressure computed along the pipeline is affected by computational domains. It is noted pressure obtained by the computational model considering both of the a hexahedron chamber and pressure tubes has a relatively good agreement to the experimental data.