A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TWO METHODOLOGIES FOR NON LINEAR FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF KNIFE EDGE GATE VALVE SLEEVE

Knife edge gate valves are used in mineral processing industries for regulating the slurry transportation. Due to the erosive nature of slurry, rubber sleeves are used in place of metal seat rings in these valves. The design of rubber sleeve has to be such that it will withstand the compression and shearing due to gate movement and will also maintain its elasticity as the gate passes forth and back through the sleeves. The results of finite element analysis of the valve assembly can provide insights about rubber sleeve behavior and design modifications required to achieve satisfactory performance. Two methodologies have been used to carry out FE analysis for the valve sleeve. In the first one, full 3D model analysis of rubber sleeves is carried out. This methodology involves solution of FE model with large number of 3D elements; hence requires long durations of solving time and high in-core memory consumption. In the second methodology, axisymmetric element formulation is used; hence it involves solution of FE model with small no of 2D elements. Analysis carried out with the second methodology gives results reasonably similar to those of first one and takes much lesser time for both model preparation and solver running. A detailed comparison of these two methodologies has been provided in this paper.