Experimental and numerical investigation of flow forces in a seat valve using a damping sleeve with orifices

The power of hydraulic piston engines is much affected by the on-off valves which control the fuel injection of the piston assembly. Therefore, the opening time of the seat valve used as the on-off valve is optimized by minimizing the axial flow forces on the spool. A damping sleeve with orifices is proposed to change the valve internal geometry. Experimental and numerical investigations of the flow forces acting on the spool with and without the proposed damping sleeve are carried out to identify the differences in the flow field and to minimize the forces' effect. The simulated results fit the experimental results well. Both results show that the proposed damping sleeve affects the pressure distribution along the spool cone surface and the jet stream direction significantly. The effects of the orifice's width, height, and relative sleeve installation positions on the flow field and cavitation are assessed using simulation methods. As a result of the flow field changing, the damping sleeve can reduce the flow forces significantly and even reverse the forces' direction at the cost of a little flow loss. The opening time of the seat valve can be reduced by 31% to 0.67 ms by using the proposed damping sleeve.