Computer simulation of a hydraulic relief valve

Abstract

Demands of the space age brought about new technologies to meet the variety of exacting problems that were encountered. One of these new concepts was the utilization of the computer to perform mathematical simulations of the systems or individual components. A typical industrial application of computer simulations will be demonstrated here by establishing a mathematical model of a hydraulic relief valve. The method is based on the assumption that relief valves can be represented by a spring-mass system. An iterative type program was set up on a digital computer to calculate displacement, velocity, and acceleration of the poppet along with pressure and flow for each time increment following the occurrence of an initial blockage of flow in the hydraulic system. The procedure involves comparing an initially assumed displacement for each time increment to the calculated displacement that was obtained from the information supplied by the assumed displacement for each time increment. An existing relief valve design was utilized for this simulation to permit experimental verification of the assumptions and the computer results.