Journal of Fluids and Structures 42 (2013) 456465

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Journal of Fluids and Structures

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jfs

An experimental study on the stability of a direct spring

loaded poppet relief valve
C. Bazs n, C.J. Hs n
Department of Hydrodynamic Systems, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, P.O. Box 91, 1521 Budapest, Hungary

a r t i c l e in f o

abstract

Article history:
Received 13 September 2012
Accepted 16 August 2013
Available online 20 September 2013

This paper presents detailed experimental results on the static and dynamic behaviour of
a hydraulic pressure relief valve with poppet valve body, with a special emphasis on the
parameters influencing the valve instability. The first part of the paper presents the static
measurements; sonic velocity in the hydraulic hose, discharge coefficient and fluid flow
forces. The results are compared to the data found in the literature and a reasonable
agreement was found. The second part presents dynamic measurements of valve chatter.
While varying the feed flow rate, pressure and displacement time histories were recorded
for a wide range of set pressure. It is shown that the spectra of both signals have similar
frequency content, moreover, the frequency of chatter is fairly constant for a wide
parameter range, both in terms of flow rate and set pressure. The regimes of qualitatively
different motion forms (stable operation, free, impacting and chaotic oscillations) are
shown in the flow rateset pressure parameter plane.
& 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Poppet relief valve
Valve chatter
Grazing bifurcation

1. Introduction
Direct loaded pressure relief valves are widely used in the process industry to protect the system against excessive
overpressure, however, as it is well known, they have a tendency to become unstable and self-oscillate, see e.g. Misra et al.
(2002), Botros et al. (1997), Chabane et al. (2009). This motivated a significant effort to better understand the nature of valve
instability, often referred to as valve chatter. These studies mostly deal with theoretical model development and analysis
and up to the authors best knowledge there is a lack of systematic experimental studies.
Among the few experimental work on relief valve chatter, maybe the study of Kasai (1968) was the first one, in which the
author developed a mathematical model considering the inlet piping and analysed the stability of the valve theoretically in
the presence of harmonic disturbance. The author obtained conditions to determine the disturbance frequency range in
which instability occurs. Some experiments were also performed and good agreement with the theory was found. An in situ
example is given by Misra et al. (2002), where a few recorded time histories are shown, mainly for model validation
purposes. Moussou et al. (2010) focused on the valve dynamics itself (without upstream or downstream piping), yet was
able to demonstrate that upon increasing the supply pressure dynamic instability occurs, especially for small lifts. This
agrees well with the explanation often encountered in the literature (Hayashi, 2001) that essentially there are two origins of
instability in the system, one being the valve plus reservoir (valve mode) as a stand-alone system that might be unstable by
itself, while the other one is the pipe mode, i.e. the interaction of the valve and pipeline dynamics. These two modes were
also experimentally observed, see Botros et al. (1997). Typically for lower pipe lengths (up to approx. L/D20) the oscillation

Corresponding authors. Tel.: 36 1 463 1680; fax: 36 1 463 3091.

E-mail addresses: csaba.bazso@hds.bme.hu (C. Bazs), csaba.hos@hds.bme.hu (C.J. Hs).

0889-9746/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfluidstructs.2013.08.008

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457

frequency reflects pipe's one-quarter-wave resonance frequency, which is consistent with the theoretical results by e.g.
Hayashi et al. (1997). Frommann and Friedel (1998) present experimental data to validate his improved pressure surge
criterion for the compressible case. The authors also deduce that long pipelines are more dangerous from the stability point
of view. Finally, Chabane et al. (2009) studied the effect of built-up back pressure on valve chatter and found that more than
10% back pressure influence the stability margin significantly.
From the theoretical modelling and analysis point of view, a large number of studies can be found. MacLeod (1985)
analysed analytically the dynamic stability of a relief valve by means of linear stability analysis and found that the parameter
changes that improve the valve stability (e.g. increasing the spring stiffness or the damping) result in slower valve opening.
The usage of direction-sensitive damping was proposed that dampens only the closing motion. Hayashi et al. (1997)
performed a detailed numerical analysis on the chaotic vibrations with the help of the toolbox of nonlinear dynamical
systems. An interesting outcome of this study was that self-excited oscillations may be present even below the cracking
pressure. Dasgupta and Karmakar (2002) investigated the sensitivity of the system parameters on the transient response
and found that the behaviour of the system is critically influenced by the pre-compression of the main spring and the
geometry of the damper. More recently, Licsk et al. (2009) developed an analytical model of a simple hydraulic relief valve
and demonstrated the richness of the dynamics: free, impacting and chaotic oscillations. Moreover, he proposed to employ
the recently developed techniques of non-smooth dynamical systems given in e.g. Di Bernardo et al. (2008). Hs and
Champneys (2011) presented a detailed study on the non-smooth dynamics of the system described by Licsk et al. (2009)
and gave a qualitative explanation on the birth and fate of the different motion forms. Moreover, it was demonstrated that
qualitative bifurcation analysis can be used to efficiently investigate the influence of the system parameters.
Due to the recent development of CFD techniques several studies have been published which employ state-of-the-art
CFD solvers (notably with deforming/moving mesh). Srikanth and Bhasker (2009) present 2-D flow analysis of a circuit
breaker valve with moving grid, which was then extended with FSI simulation by Song et al. (2010). Viel and Imagine (2011)
reported the methodology of co-simulation between AMESim and CFD software for transient simulation of hydraulic
components in their surrounding environment. Unfortunately neither experimental nor analytical validation was given in
these studies. Yonezawa et al. (2012) in their study differentiated amplified vibration and self-excited vibration in a control
valve by means of FSI simulations. CFD techniques also provide the ability of determination of such parameters whose value
is cumbersome to measure, for example the value of damping coefficient (see e.g. Khalak and Williamson, 1997; Vandiver,
2012) or added mass (see e.g. Vandiver, 2012) due to flow induced vibration.
This paper aims to present the results of a systematic series of measurements, which focused on the influence of feed
flow rate and set pressure on the dynamic behaviour of the valve. One of our primary aims was to experimentally verify the
motion types described by Hs and Champneys (2011) (e.g. non-impacting and impacting oscillations) and the influence of
the system parameters. For the sake of simplicity and to avoid additional gas dynamical effects, slightly compressible fluid
(hydraulic oil) was chosen to perform the measurements with. The results will be interpreted in terms of bifurcation
diagrams, similar to those ones given by Hs and Champneys (2011).
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section (Section 2) is devoted to the description of the test facility
and measurements accuracy. Then Section 3 presents the results of the steady-state measurements on discharge coefficient,
fluid forces and sonic velocity. As already mentioned, of central interest is the dynamic behaviour of the relief valve with an
emphasis on unstable operation, chattering. These results are presented in Section 4. First, in Section 4.1, the set pressure is
fixed and the dynamic response under the variation of flow rate is shown. Then, in Section 4.2, the effect of the set pressure
is also studied. The results are concluded in Section 5.
2. Experimental set-up
The sketch of the hydraulic test rig is shown in Fig. 1. A screw pump (2) driven by a variable-speed AC electric motor was
used to provide the desired flow rate. The test valve and the pump were connected by hydraulic rubber hose (3). Pressure
transducers (4, type: HBM P8-AP) were mounted at two locations along the pipeline: one close to the test valve, while
another one close to the pressure side of the screw pump. The test valve was a direct spring-loaded one with conical valve
body and sharp seat, see the right panel of Fig. 1. The valve shaft (8) was led out of the chamber to provide direct access for
measuring the displacement of the valve body and the forces acting on the valve body. The exhaust port (10) was placed at
the top of the chamber to ensure oil lubrication between the shaft and the pre-compression thread. The diameter of the
chamber was Dch 100 mm, which, compared to the seat diameter (Ds 15 mm), was believed to be sufficiently large not to
influence the flow pattern at the downstream part of the valve (for details on the effect of the geometry of the downstream
chamber on the fluid force and discharge coefficient, see McCloy and McGuigan (1964) or Vaughan et al. (1992)). The spring
was a linear helical spring with s15 kN/m stiffness.
The displacement was measured directly with an inductive displacement transducer denoted by 12 in Fig. 1 (type: Balluff
BAW). The fluid force measurement was performed with the help of a load cell (type Megatron Kraftaufnehmer KM300).
A metering tank was connected to the discharge of the valve to determine the flow rate, however, it was only used to
establish a calibrated correlation between the revolution number of the screw pump n, the mean system pressure p and
the flow rate, i.e. Q n; p. Once this relationship was measured, the flow rate was computed merely by means of the
revolution number and the system pressure. The data acquisition and the signal processing were preformed with the help of
a HBM QuantumX device, that allowed 9.6 kHz sampling frequency in the case of the static measurements and 19.2 kHz for

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C. Bazs, C.J. Hs / Journal of Fluids and Structures 42 (2013) 456465

Fig. 1. Sketch of the experimental test-rig. 1 hydraulic oil tank, 2 screw pump, 3 transmission line, 4 pressure-transducers, 5 signal processing
devices, 6 inlet, 7 valve body, 8 valve shaft, 9 spring, 10 outlet, 11 pre-compression thread, 12 inductive displacement transducer.

Table 1
Parameters of the test-rig.
Quantity

Symbol

Value

Units

Valve mass
Spring mass
Spring stiffness
Half cone angle of poppet
Pipe diameter
Pipe length
Seat diameter
Density of fluid
Kinematic viscosity of fluid

mv
ms
s

Dp
Lp
Ds

0.458
0.117
15
30
10
4.5
15
870
20

kg
kg
kN/m
deg.
mm
m
mm
kg/m3
mm2/s

dynamic ones. The measurements were carried out at temperatures between 28 and 321C. The parameters of the test-rig
and the fluid are presented in Table 1.
Force, pressure, and pump revolution number were measured directly, the flow rate was interpolated based on the
pressure and revolution number using previous, calibrated data sets corresponding to the pump performance curve. The
overall (absolute) accuracy of the force measurement was 3.1 N, while the relative error of the revolution number and
pressure measurement was below 1%.
3. Static measurements
3.1. Discharge coefficient
It is conventional in the corresponding literature (e.g. Borutzky et al., 2002; Urata, 1969; Takenaka, 1964) to assume fully
developed turbulent flow through the valve and use the orifice equation for calculating the flow rate, that is
s
2p
;
1
Q C d Ax

where p is the pressure drop, is the fluid density, A(x) is the flow-through area and Cd is the discharge coefficient. The
flow-through area for sharp seat, conical valve body and small lifts can be calculated as (see Urata, 1969)
Ax Ds h Ds sin x;

where Ds is the diameter of the inlet and h sin x is the gap width. Although the discharge coefficient Cd depends on two
parameters primarily, which are the valve lift and system pressure (see e.g. Bergada and Watton, 2004; Merritt, 1967;
Takenaka, 1964), it is usually assumed in the literature that it can be described by the (gap) Reynolds number as a single
parameter (see Borutzky et al., 2002; Merritt, 1967; Takenaka, 1964). By considering the mean velocity v in the gap with
flow-through area A(x), the clearance h between the seat and the valve as characteristic length and the kinematic viscosity ,
the Reynolds number takes the form:
Re

vh
Q

Ds

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459

1
0.8
0.6

Cd

x = 0.1 mm
x = 0.15 mm
x = 0.2 mm
x = 0.25 mm
x = 0.3 mm
x = 0.35 mm
Cd = B(Re)C

0.4
0.2
0

100

200

300

400

Re
Fig. 2. Discharge coefficient as a function of Reynolds number.

Fig. 3. Measurement of fluid force.

Simultaneous measurement of displacement, pressure and flow rate allowed us to estimate the value of discharge
coefficient. The measurement was carried out as follows. The spring was replaced by a positioner ring to set fixed valve
displacements of x0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, and 0.35 mm. Then, for each displacement, the flow rate was increased
systematically up to the maximum flow rate of the screw pump (Q 1:524 l=min).
The measured discharge coefficients are shown in Fig. 2 as a function of the Reynolds number (3).
Merritt (1967) and Takenaka (1964) approximated Cd as the square root function of the Reynolds number C d f Re1=2 .
However, in our case, a curve fit assuming square root dependence did not give satisfactory accuracy, hence the exponent of
the Reynolds number was also considered as a free parameter, i.e. C d BReC . By simple logarithmic curve fit it was found
that B 0.2028 and C 0.2358 (goodness of fit: R2 0:9090), which are also shown in Fig. 2. By performing error
propagation analysis it was found that the maximum absolute error of the Reynolds number was ERe;max 7 1:3  104
while maximum absolute error of the discharge coefficient was EC d ;max 7 0:012. The dominant parameter influencing the
accuracy of Reynolds number and of the discharge coefficient was the valve positioning accuracy.
3.2. Fluid force
In order to measure the fluid force acting on the valve body, the spring was again removed and a load cell was mounted
to the valve shaft, see Fig. 3.
The theoretical force is given by Bergada and Watton (2004):


1 cos
F F p F mom pAs Q 2
;
4

As
Ax

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C. Bazs, C.J. Hs / Journal of Fluids and Structures 42 (2013) 456465

pset = 5.3 bar

error [%]

F [N]

300
200

error [%]

F [N]

pset = 7.6 bar

200

pset = 12.0 bar

error [%]

F [N]

5
0
5

100
400
300

5
0
5

200
400

pset = 13.9 bar

error [%]

F [N]

0
5

100
300

300

5
0
5

200
500

pset = 17.5 bar

error [%]

F [N]

400

5
0
5

300
0

10

Q [l/min]

15

20

10

15

20

Q [l/min]

Fig. 4. Fluid force on the valve body. Left panel: absolute measured values. Dots represent the measurements, plus signs and crosses stand for the
theoretical fluid force given by (4) without and with the momentum term, respectively. Right panel: Relative differences between (a) plus signs: the
measured force and the pressure term in (4) and (b) crosses: the measured force and both terms in (4). Solid lines represent the error boundaries (see text
for details). The rows correspond to different spring pre-compression.

where Fp stands for the pressure force, Fmom stands for the momentum force and is the half-cone angle. We employ the
usual assumption that the flow angle through the gap equals the half cone angle, see Urata (1969) and McCloy and
McGuigan (1964). Fig. 4 compares the measured results and the analytical prediction; the left column shows the measured
values (dots) and the theoretical fluid force given by (4) without (plus sign) and with (crosses) the momentum term,
respectively. The right column depicts the discrepancy between them, defined by
error %

F measured F
:
F measured

It is clearly seen that the higher the flow rate is, the more significant the momentum term in (4) becomes, which is
consistent with the results of Urata (1969). Note that for our particular geometry and parameters, by neglecting the
momentum term in (4), the relative difference between the measurements and the pressure force is mostly below 3%. Eq. (4)
tends to underestimate the force in the case of small flow rates, yet the error is below 5% in the whole parameter range. The
error boundaries of the force measurement are depicted by the solid lines.
3.3. Hydraulic capacity and sonic velocity
The hydraulic capacity of the transmission essentially measures the stiffness of the system and thus plays an important
role in the dynamic of the system, see Vaina and Hruk (2009), Keramat et al. (2012). It is given by
s
V
Ered
C H 2 ; with a
;
6

a
where V is the oil volume in the hose, a is the sonic velocity in the fluid, and Ered is the reduced bulk modulus including both
the fluid and pipe wall elasticity. Although there are formulae available (e.g. Rabie, 2009; Wiley and Streeter, 1978; Keramat
et al., 2012) to compute Ered, as the hydraulic hose is neither thin-walled nor linearly elastic, it was found to be more
straightforward to measure it with the help of two pressure transducers as follows. After the revolution number was set, the

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461

system was excited by hitting the valve body with a hammer. By correlating the two pressure signals and finding the time
delay between them, the sonic velocity could be simply computed. The average value of sonic velocity was found to be
a 1062 m/s but its characteristic shows a slight increase as pressure rises, which coincides with the results of Vaina and
Hruk (2009) (Fig. 5).
4. Dynamic measurements
The main focus of this study is on valve chatter measurements, notably on the parametric stability boundaries and the
dominant frequency of chatter. Thus dynamic measurements were performed for different set pressure values (i.e. spring
pre-compression values, x0), in which, after starting from low flow rates, the revolution number of the screw pump (thus the
flow rate) was increased with small steps up to the maximum value (approx. 23 l=min) and then decreased backwards to see
if hysteresis occurs. At each flow rate, pressure and displacement time histories were recorded for 4 s with 19.2 kHz
sampling frequency. This resulted in a total number of 60 measurements per set pressure.

a [m/s]

1500

1000

500

10

15

20

25

30

p [bar]

x [mm]

Fig. 5. Sonic velocity as a function of system pressure.

(e)

0.6

(d)

(c)

(b)

0.4
0.2
0

10

15

20

25

x [mm]

Q [l/min]

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

x [mm]

0.05

0.1

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0.05

t [s]

0.1

0.05

0.2
0.1
0

0.1

0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08

0.1

0.2

0.3

t [s]

Fig. 6. Panel (a): Measured bifurcation diagram showing the behaviour of the system while (slowly) varying the flow rate. Panels (b)(e): Displacement
time histories at flow rates indicated in panel (a). Spring pre-compression: x0 17 mm.

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C. Bazs, C.J. Hs / Journal of Fluids and Structures 42 (2013) 456465

4.1. One-parameter study: effect of flow rate at fixed set pressure

Q [l/min]

We start by describing the typical behaviour of the system while varying the flow rate, for a fixed set pressure. The
results will be presented by means of bifurcation diagrams as in panel (a) of Fig. 6, where those displacement values are
shown which correspond to zero velocity or impact with the seat. Panels (b)(e) of the same figure show the four typical
motion types, that is (b) stable equilibrium, (c) oscillation without impact with the seat, (d) regular impacting oscillation and
(e) chaos-like impacting oscillation. Note that this experimentally obtained diagram is qualitatively similar to that one
presented by Licsk et al. (2009) and Hs and Champneys (2011), which was obtained by numerical modelling.
As it can be observed in Fig. 6, the valve motion is stable for high flow rates and, upon decreasing the flow, a critical value
is reached at 20:4 l=min where the valve looses its stability and chatter appears. As described by Hs and Champneys (2011),
the oscillation is born via a Hopf bifurcation, i.e. there is a pair of purely complex eigenvalues of the linearized system. By
further decreasing the flow rate, the amplitude of the oscillation grows and, at approx. 14:7 l=min, it reaches the seat and

25

25

20

20

15

15

10

10

200

400

600

200

f [Hz]

400

600

f [Hz]

Fig. 7. Frequency content of the self-excited vibration for x0 17 mm (left: frequency map of the displacement, right: frequency map of the pressure before
the valve). Cross, asterisk, and rectangle represents the point of primary Hopf bifurcation, grazing bifurcation, and chaotic chaterring, respectively.

x [mm]

x0 = 13.5 mm

x0 = 15 mm

0.5

0.5

10

15

20

25

x [mm]

20

25

10

15

20

25

10
15
Q [l/min]

20

25

0.5

10

15

20

25

1
x0 = 21 mm

x [mm]

15

x0 = 19 mm

0.5

x0 = 23 mm

0.5

10

1
x0 = 17 mm

0.5

10
15
Q [l/min]

20

25

Fig. 8. Measured bifurcation diagrams for different spring pre-compression values. Cross, plus sign, asterisk, and rectangle represents the point of primary
Hopf bifurcation, secondary Hopf bifurcation, grazing bifurcation, and chaotic chaterring, respectively.

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463

the impacting oscillation regime starts. The point where the valve body first grazes the seat is called a grazing bifurcation
and is a unique feature of non-smooth dynamical systems, for details see e.g. Di Bernardo et al. (2008). After the grazing
bifurcation point the oscillation amplitude decreases with decreasing flow rate. For low flow rates (below 4:15 l=min) we
experience highly complicated, chaos-like motion form. Finally, at 2:07 l=min the system becomes stable again.
Fig. 7 shows the dominant frequency content of the measured signals for (left) displacement and (right) pressure signals.
Note that the two signals contain essentially the same frequency components. In the free-oscillation regime, the dominant
frequency is 238 Hz, which is clearly the pipe eigenfrequency fpipe a/L1064/4.5 236.4 Hz. Once the impacting oscillation
appears (at approx. 10 l=min.), there is a slight increase in the frequency, which is caused by the fact that roughly speaking
the impact interrupts and cuts off a portion of the free oscillation. Finally, in the chaotic regime, we observe a wider
frequency content, which is due to the many random-like impacts with the seat.
4.2. Two-parameter study: effect of set pressure
Next, we present the effect of set pressure by analysing the bifurcation diagrams obtained by setting different spring precompression, see Fig. 8.
First, notice that upon increasing the set pressure, the point of the initial instability denoted by cross is also increasing,
i.e. the unstable region increases. For low set pressures (x0 13.5 and 15 mm) we observe a second critical flow rate, below
which the motion stabilizes. Although this point was not captured by the model of Hs and Champneys (2011), we speculate
that it is a secondary Hopf bifurcation. For higher set pressures, this point becomes hard to identify, and it is also unclear if it
persists or is destroyed.
The same mechanism applies for the rest of the regimes: the chaotic and the impacting regimes also become wider. In
the case of the last three set pressures, no stable valve motion was experienced neither at high nor at low flow rates.
The appearing frequency at the primary stability loss is listed in Table 2. For a given set pressure value, this frequency
remained constant up to the occurrence of impacting oscillations, as already shown in Fig. 7. We emphasize again that these
frequencies are very close to the pipe eigenfrequency, which is 236 Hz.
Finally, we present the essence of the measurements in Fig. 9, where all the previously described special points are
depicted on the flow rateset pressure plane. Previous studies (Licsk et al., 2009; Hs and Champneys, 2011) dealing with
Table 2
Critical flow rate and oscillation frequency at the initial stability loss.
Spring pre-compression (mm)

Set pressure (bar)

Flow rate (l/min)

Frequency (Hz)

13.5
14
14.5
15
15.5
16
17

11.46
11.88
12.31
12.73
13.16
13.58
14.43

8.033
10.69
12.44
14.15
15.36
17.28
20.42

244.9
243.2
241.4
239.7
239.7
237.9
237.9

q [] Q [l/s]
25
Boundary of loss of
stability
Primary Hopf bifurcation
Secondary Hopf bifurcation
Grazing bifurcation
Chaotic chattering

1
20

0.8
15

0.6
10

0.4
Stable

0.2

Untable

10

15

10

20

15

25

20

x0 [mm]
pset [bar], []

Fig. 9. Boundary of loss of stability and the experienced types of stability losses.

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C. Bazs, C.J. Hs / Journal of Fluids and Structures 42 (2013) 456465

such pressure relief valve system analysed the dynamics in terms of dimensionless parameters such as compressibility
parameter , pre-compression parameter , and dimensionless flow rate q that are calculated for the particular set-up as
follows:

Ered Q ref
p 57:4;
V p0 s=m



sx0
p
1
 x0 mm;
set 0:849
mm
A p0
p0

Q l=m
;
Q ref l=m



with Q ref 21:5 l=m :

Notice that the spring precompression parameter's numerical value coincides with the set pressure given in bars. These
normalized values are also depicted in Fig. 9 giving more generality to the results. It also worth mentioning that the
relatively high value of is typical for liquid systems. In the case of highly compressible fluids (gases), this value is well
below 1.
5. Conclusion
A systematic experimental study was presented on relief valve instability for slightly compressible fluid (hydraulic oil).
The experimental system consisted of a positive displacement pump, a simple direct spring loaded valve and a hydraulic
hose connecting them. Pressure and displacement time histories were recorded for a large number of flow rates and set
pressures.
We have experimentally validated the qualitative bifurcation diagram given by Hs and Champneys (2011). The
experiments show that for high flow rates, the valve equilibrium is stable, which, upon decreasing the flow rate, looses its
stability via a Hopf bifurcation. A free, non-impacting oscillation is born, whose amplitude increases with decreasing the
flow rate and once the valve body reaches the seat impacting periodic orbit is born, whose amplitude decreases with
decreasing flow rate. At low flow rates, highly nontrivial, chaos-like impacting motions were observed. Finally, for very low
flow rates, the valve stabilizes again, but only for low set pressures. Upon increasing the set pressure the unstable regime
expands quickly and vice versa: a critical set pressure can be found, below which the valve is stable for all flow rates.
An interesting outcome of our study was that although the experimental results qualitatively agreed with the no-pipemodel presented by Hs and Champneys (2011), the oscillation frequency remained constant for a wide parameter range
(both in terms of flow rate and set pressure). Moreover, this frequency coincides with the pipe eigenfrequency a/L, which
suggests that the initial valve stability loss (Hopf bifurcation) immediately couples with the pipe's internal dynamics and the
latter dominates the behaviour of the system. Future theoretical studies should also take into account its internal dynamics.
From a more practical point of view it was clearly seen that there is a critical spring pre-compression below which the
valve is unconditionally stable. Qualitatively explaining, the higher the spring pre-compression is, the smaller the valve
openings are and the more intense the acoustical feedback inside the pipe is (see Misra et al., 2002). This critical spring precompression can be found by simple linear stability analysis during the design phase. It is also important to emphasize that
the valve itself is neither stable nor unstable and one cannot design a stable valve without taking into account the system it
is connected to, notably the connecting pipeline.

Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Jnos Bolyai research grant of the Hungarian Academy of sciences of C. Hs and has
been developed in the framework of the project Talent care and cultivation in the scientific workshops of BME project.
This project was supported by the Grant TMOP-4.2.2.B-10/1-2010-0009.
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