Development and testing of a steel regulating thermostatic valve

Abstract

A steel thermostatic valve group has been designed from a more affordable, cheaper domestic material - structural carbon steel grade PS08, which makes it possible to improve the manufacturability, installation, ease of the developed product operation, and reduce production costs. As a prototype, bronze thermostatic valves with threaded connections of foreign manufacturers were used, other geometrical parameters were determined by the production manufacturability. The results of the thermostatic valve steel body new design studies for two-pipe water heating systems are presented. A 3D model was built using the Solidworks design and graphics package, optimizing the geometric, mass, and strength valve characteristics. The application Solidworks Flow Simulation calculated the pressure loss in the digital 3D-model of the valve, its hydraulic characteristic was calculated. According to the numerical experiment results, a physical model of the valve group was manufactured and tested on a pouring stand. A comparison of the hydraulic characteristics of the digital and physical models was made, improvements to the design were made, and the purity of the internal surfaces was improved. A series of tests was carried out to determine the hydraulic characteristics for the regulating mechanism various values adjustment. In the heating season 2018 - 2019, full-scale tests were carried out at the operating facility with the installation of a valve and a thermal head on experimental convectors. The internal air average temperature measurements showed that the air temperatures in all the rooms with the same settings of the thermostatic head were within the acceptable limits. Therefore, the control quality of the pilot valve was adequate. The experimental thermostatic valve group was launched into small-scale production for the field tests in the buildings for various purposes.