Evaluation and compensation of steady gas flow force on the high-pressure electro-pneumatic servo valve direct-driven by voice coil motor

A novel voice coil motor (VCM) direct drive single stage high-pressure pneumatic servo valve is designed, and then the steady gas flow force acting on the spool of the servo valve is investigated by numerical simulation and experimental methods in this paper. At present, many studies about flow force are concentrated mainly on hydraulic valves, but rarely on pneumatic valves. However, the velocity of gas is up to sonic when high-pressure gas flows through the servo valve orifice. And therefore, the steady gas flow force, generated by high pressure and high speed gas flow, cannot be neglected and is an important disturbance for the VCM direct-drive single stage high-pressure pneumatic servo valve. Consequently, the numerical simulation with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is adopted to analyze the flow filed, jet angles, and steady gas flow forces for the servo valve with different valve openings and inlet pressures. The experimental study is performed to evaluate and confirm the numerical analysis. Then the compensated approach is proposed to reduce the steady gas flow force for the servo valve, changing the angle of non-metering port designed in the valve sleeve to the spool axis. The results demonstrate that the presented numerical analysis method is validated, the gas jet angle for the servo valve orifice is more than 69° and varies with different spool openings, and the steady gas flow force is nonlinear with valve opening and linear with inlet pressure when the outlet boundary is atmospheric pressure. Moreover, the steady gas flow force can be decreased by using the compensated method, which indicates that the single stage servo valve tends to require less power and energy to actuate for the VCM.

► A novel energy saving high-pressure electro-pneumatic servo valve is presented.
► An evaluated method for steady gas flow forces on pneumatic valves is proposed.
► Gas jet angles at the orifices for the valve are larger than 69° commonly used.
► The steady gas flow force is strongly nonlinear with valve opening.
► The steady gas flow force is compensated and the aim at energy saving is realized.