Flow Force Analysis and Structural Optimization of a Large Flow Rate Pressure Compensation Valve

During rocket launch, the swing speed of the umbilical arm is controlled by a speed regulating valve consisting of a large flow rate pressure compensation valve and a variable throttle valve. In this scenario, there are two core issues in the design process of a large flow rate pressure compensation valve: to begin with, the nonlinear flow force under the condition of a high flow has a great influence on the speed regulation performance; furthermore, the load pressure fluctuations challenge the pressure regulation performance of the pressure compensation valve, which is generated by variable wind loads. To solve these problems, firstly, the hollow spool type is determined as the basic configuration of the pressure compensation valve through theoretical and simulation analysis of flow force. And then, the optimal experimental scheme is designed based on the response surface model, which takes the flow force linearity as the target, the size and number of oil holes in the spool and valve sleeve as the influencing factors, where the size of flow force linearity at each design point is obtained by CFD. Finally, the optimal structure parameters are obtained through genetic algorithm optimization. The results show that the pressure compensation valve has better linearity of flow force at 800 L/min after optimization. The speed regulating valve performs better under load fluctuation after matching the corresponding spring parameters.