Co-Simulation Modeling and Multi-Objective Optimization of Dynamic Characteristics of Flow Balancing Valve

Abstract

The poor dynamic characteristics of the flow balance valve used in a ship’s HVAC system are the main reasons for the hydraulic imbalance and high energy consumption of the system. A new adjustable dynamic flow balance valve structure is designed, which is composed of a self-operated pressure regulator and an electric V-shaped ball valve in series. When the V-shaped ball valve is fully opened at the 20 t/h flow level, the dynamic characteristics of the flow balance valve cannot meet the requirements. A new co-simulation method that combines MATLAB/Simulink and the UDF dynamic grid is proposed to study the dynamic characteristics of a flow balance valve with a 20 t/h flow rate under different pressure drop step signal interference. When the calculation of each micro-element time converges, the valve core motion parameters, the pressure boundary conditions, the valve core axial medium force, and the valve outlet flow are interactively transmitted in the two simulation environments. The discrepancy between the co-simulation and test results is less than 5%, which verifies the accuracy of the co-simulation model. Aiming at the most severe dynamic characteristic working condition where the pressure drop is stepped from 30 to 300 kPa, the influence of different structural parameters on the dynamic characteristics of the balance valve is analyzed. A new surrogate model combining RSM and RBF with the co-simulation method improves the optimization efficiency and fitting accuracy. To improve the convergence of the traditional NSGA-II algorithm, key structural parameters are optimized by combining the NSGA-II algorithm and SDR. The test results show that the dynamic characteristics of the optimized valve are improved, the discrepancy between the stabilized flow rate and 20 t/h does not exceed 4.5%, and the flow is relatively constant. Therefore, the proposed co-simulation and optimization method can be applied to the dynamic characteristic prediction of self-operated valves, such as dynamic flow balance valves, to provide guidance for developing high-precision self-operated valves.