Effects of Sleeve Parameters on Flow-Induced Noise in High Pressure Reducing Valve

Abstract As a common control element in the pipeline systems, the high pressure reducing valve achieves pressure regulation through throttling action. In recent years, the demand for pressure reducing valve has expanded significantly under increasingly severe and demanding working conditions. Under the high pressure difference and high flow rate, the complex flow state in the control valve directly results in flow-induced noise. Compared to the common control valve, the porous sleeve control valve has a good effect on reducing noise. And the multilayer porous sleeve can further improve noise reduction performance. As the fluid passes through the sleeve, the change of flow area results in continuous consumption of the fluid’s energy. As a result, the fluid pressure will decrease. According to the Bernoulli’s equation, the fluid velocity will adjust the pressure drop to maintain the equation. The flow-induced noise of the control valve will reduce. There are more specific requirements for the design of multi-stage control valves operating under conditions with high-pressure differentials. The research on the flow-induced noise resulting from internal component parameters of the control valve is still insufficient. Thus, this study first selected the porous sleeve of the high-pressure differential control valve as the object of investigation. The pressure difference between the inlet and outlet of the valve should be higher than that of common valves. Then, the flow characteristic is analyzed through the steady and transient flow model. The velocity and pressure are monitored to reflect the flow characteristics. The design of the valve’s internal component is ensured to achieve the required operating conditions. To this end, the effects of the sleeve holes’ arrangement and the stage, have been investigated in this paper. The holes’ rows and the number of holes per row were taken as optimization variables of the sleeve holes’ arrangement through response surface methodology. The level and distribution location of the flow-induced noise are obtained. Taking the total sound pressure level of the monitoring point as the optimization objective, the optimization design of noise reduction structure was carried out. The FW-H acoustic analogy theory was applied to determine the intensity and distribution characteristics of the flow-induced noise. And the design method for the sleeve with the lowest flow-induced noise is identified. The results show that the optimizing structure with the sleeve parameters has a positive effect on reducing the noise. The low flow-induced noise can be obtained by optimizing the structure of the internal component. This study serves as a valuable reference for optimizing the design of the porous sleeve of the high pressure reducing valves.