Flow Analysis And Structural Optimization Of Pressure-regulating Valve Used In Wet Friction Clutch

Pressure-regulating valve, an important hydraulic component in hydraulic transmission of gear box, has two main functions: one is to provide oil pressure for the operation of the marine wet friction clutch; the other is to provide oil pressure for lubricantion of the hydraulic system. As the development of wet friction clutches towards high speed and large power, rationality and operation stability of its structure has been drawing more and more attention. Therefore, a research on channel structure and flow field characterization of pressure-regulating valves is necessary to enlarge the power of clutches in design.The topic of this paper is supported by scientific and technological project of Chongqing. The flow field analysis and structural optimization of pressure-regulating valve are carried out so as to design suitable valve for large-scale wet friction clutches. The research work in this paper can be summarized as follows:â‘ Considering the structure of the pressure-regulating valve and working condition, taking spool shape, opening positions, lubricant velocity at the inlet and lubricant temperature as variables, the parameterized finite element analysis program for the oil in the channel of the valve is programmed with ANSYS re-development language-APDL to establish.â‘¡Computational simulation of fluid in the pressure-regulating valves are carried out based on turbulence model to obtain pressure contours and velocity vectors of lubricant with different openings, lubricant temperature and flow for the valve, so as to study the kinetic energy and consumption energy of oil in the channel. Pressure test of the valve is carried out on the marine general performance test bench of gearbox for the comparison of experimental pressure-opening position curve with computational one to validate the finite element analysis results.â‘¢Oil pressure and velocity distributions are discussed after an analysis of flow field characteristics in the channels of valves with different spools. Then the influence of spool structures to fluid field characterizations is concluded to reduce energy loss of fluid.â‘£Taking least consumption energy as the objective function, structure parameters of spool as design variables, and maximum working oil pressue and minimum lubricant pressure as the state variables, an optimization model of valve is established and then the spool structure is optimized by means of response surface optimization method.