Valves

Design and Optimization of Valves

Ever-increasing technical requirements and competitive pressure, stringent manufacturing constraints, and a wide spectrum for shape variation, lead to a very high level of complexity in the design of state-of-the-art valves, with typical goals such as smoothening the flow path, reducing dead space, improving flushability, and minimizing pressure drop. Modern simulation tools allow the designers a good insight into the performance measures of interest, but can be challenging and time-consuming to employ on a wider scale, especially when performing parameter studies. A proven way to overcome these challenges is automated design exploration and optimization.

Optimization and automated design exploration augment the development process by leading to better and optimized designs, shortening development times and reducing design cycles, as well as increasing the knowledge about the product’s behavior, i.e., the influence of various parameters on its performance, early in the design process, when the freedom for making decisions is largest.

Apart from the aforementioned simulation tools, two crucial components are needed to achieve the desired process automation: a driver of the optimization process with appropriate systematic variation and optimization strategies, and a suitable CAD tool that can reliably produce the different geometry variants that should be analyzed.

Valve Design Software CAESES

CAESES® is a comprehensive software solution for exploring and optimizing complex valve designs. CAESES® bridges the gap between traditional CAD and simulation. It provides intelligent geometry models for robust shape variation, and CFD automation to conduct design explorations and optimization. In particular, the focus of CAESES® is the simulation-ready and variable CAD.

Why Would I Need an Additional CAD System?

In our experience, the primary bottleneck in setting up and running an automated design exploration or optimization process is related to the handling of the geometry:

  • Geometry variation with traditional CAD systems is often tedious or prone to failure, i.e., some or even many of the variants fail to regenerate when changing parameter values.
  • Too many parameters make optimization inefficient.
  • Simulation engineers depend on the CAD department to provide geometry (variants).
  • It is difficult to consider, or even automatically fulfill, given constraints.
  • The quality of the CAD model might not be suitable for simulation (e.g., w.r.t. watertightness, level of detail).

For the most part, CAESES® is a highly specialized CAD system that specifically tackles these problems. It is focused on parametric modeling and variation of complex geometries for design studies and optimization. It provides efficient parameterization methods that offer a high degree of flexibility while using less parameters, comprehensive capabilities for integrating constraints, and simulation-ready exports that require no manual processing.

Valve Design Capabilities

CAESES® comes with an extensive set of capabilities to support the design and optimization of valves:

  • Comprehensive parametric modeling of arbitrary geometries based on fully user-defined parameterizations, with a special focus on complex – often free-formed – geometries that are typically difficult to parameterize in traditional CAD systems.
  • Alternatively, flexible and powerful morphing capabilities for quick but highly controlled modification of imported geometries (discrete or NURBS based).
  • Robust variation with no failed variants.
  • Full consideration of constraints, e.g., due to manufacturing and packaging reasons.
  • Geometry exports in several different formats suitable for your CFD/meshing tools. Most of the formats support patch naming, so that downstream tools can correctly identify surface patches for the assignment of individual mesh settings or boundary conditions.
  • Generic interface to easily connect CAESES® to external simulation and calculation tools (often CFD, but also other disciplines, such as structural analysis.).
  • Fully-featured optimization environment with a wide selection of DoE and optimization strategies, as well as data management and post-processing capabilities.
  • Full scriptability, to easily integrate CAESES® in third-party optimizers or custom workflows.

Valve Applications

CAESES® can cover the complete ranges of valves, including:

  • Globe valves
  • Gate valves
  • Check valves
  • Needle valves
  • Spool valves
  • Ball valves
  • Butterfly valves
  • Diaphragm valves
4 Way Spool Valve
Globe Valve
DN700 Control Valve
Valve with CFD domain
4 Way Spool Valve
4 Way Spool Valve
Globe Valve
Globe Valve
DN700 Control Valve
DN700 Control Valve
Valve with CFD domain
Valve with CFD domain
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4 Way Spool Valve
4 Way Spool Valve
Globe Valve
Globe Valve
DN700 Control Valve
DN700 Control Valve
Valve with CFD domain
Valve with CFD domain
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Who Uses CAESES?

Leading valve manufacturers, such as GEMÜ, ARCA, Duplomatic, and Danfoss, as well as research labs and academic institutions use CAESES® for the design and optimization of valves.

Marco Wissinger

Using CAESES enables us to perform CFD-driven shape optimizations in a disruptive new way. Due to the high flexibility of the created parametric models, we are developing new, highly efficient valve designs in a much shorter period of time.

Marco Wissinger

Marco Wissinger
Pre-Development Engineer

Michele Pavanetto

We were very impressed by the speed and efficiency of the CAESES/SimericsMP+ procedure. Using a traditional approach based on incremental geometry modifications and CFD validation, it took us roughly 10 times longer to achieve the same result.

Michele Pavanetto
Technical Director

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Case Studies and Blog Posts for Valve Applications

Optimization of a Globe Valve with CFD in the Cloud
Optimization of a Globe Valve with CFD in the Cloud

This project was carried out in cooperation with GEMÜ Gebr. Müller Apparatebau and SimScale with the aims of the exploration of the potential and possible avenues for improvement of a valve, and integration of SimScale as a cloud-based CFD solver in the process.

Optimization of a Globe Valve with CFD in the Cloud
Optimization of a 4-Way Spool Valve
Optimization of a 4-Way Spool Valve

The design and optimization of valves is one of many applications where using CAESES® to robustly automate the processes of systematic geometry variation and analysis of the generated variants with a suitable CFD solver can lead to significant reductions in time-to-market, as well as to a truly optimal design within the specified constraints.

Optimization of a 4-Way Spool Valve
Optimization of a DN700 Control Valve
Optimization of a DN700 Control Valve

CFD-Driven Shape Optimization of a Control Valve Control valves are used in a wide range of industries, and they regulate the flow of various fluids. For a project at ARCA Valves, an optimization needed to be carried out for a…

Optimization of a DN700 Control Valve
Poppet Valve Optimization
Poppet Valve Optimization

In this blog post, problematic dynamic instabilities in the operation of the baseline poppet valve were investigated and effectively solved by setting up an automated workflow with CAESES® and SimericsMP®.

Poppet Valve Optimization
Webinar with Simscale and GEMÜ
CFD-Driven Shape Optimization of a Globe Valve

Computational fluid dynamics in combination with shape optimization is a powerful tool for engineers and designers who want to optimize their product designs. In this webinar, our experts will show you how FRIENDSHIP SYSTEMS and GEMÜ, leading companies in the fields of CFD-driven shape optimization and valves, respectively, leveraged the power of the cloud using SimScale to automate the design of a globe valve.

Globe Valve Optimization Webinar
Webinar with Simerics-MP
Design Studies and Optimization with CAESES and Simerics-MP

This is a webinar recording which talks about the design and optimization of pumps and valves. The two software packages CAESES and Simerics-MP are coupled to fully automate the design and optimization process.

Webinar with Simerics-MP
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Optimization of a Globe Valve with CFD in the Cloud
Optimization of a Globe Valve with CFD in the Cloud
Optimization of a 4-Way Spool Valve
Optimization of a 4-Way Spool Valve
Optimization of a DN700 Control Valve
Optimization of a DN700 Control Valve
Poppet Valve Optimization
Poppet Valve Optimization
Globe Valve Optimization Webinar
Webinar with Simscale and GEMÜ
Webinar with Simerics-MP
Webinar with Simerics-MP
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Try it Yourself

1. Download CAESES® and register for a trial license.

2. Create a geometry from scratch and set up an optimization workflow following the tutorials that you can find in CAESES®.

Questions ?

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have questions in the context of your specific application. We look forward to discussing it together with you!