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25th IAHR Symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 12 (2010) 012099 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/12/1/012099

Flow characteristics and performance evaluation of

butterfly valves using numerical analysis
S Y Jeon1, J Y Yoon2 and M S Shin1
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hanyang University, 17 Haengdang-dong
Seongdong-gu, Seoul, 133-791, Republic of Korea
2
Division of Mechanical and Management Engineering, Hanyang University, 1271 Sa-3-
dong Sangnok-gu, Ansan, 425-791, Republic of Korea

E-mail: lo21c@hanyang.ac.kr
Abstract. The industrial butterfly valves have been applied to various fields that transport fluid
in volume, especially water supply and drainage pipeline for flow control. The butterfly valves
in various shapes are manufactured, but a fitting performance comparison is not made up. For
this reason, we carried out numerical analysis of some kind of butterfly valves for water supply
and drainage pipeline using commercial CFD code FLUENT, and made a comparative study of
these results. Also, the flow coefficient, the loss coefficient, and pressure distribution of valves
according to valve opening rate were compared each other and the influence of these design
variables on valve performance were checked over. Through flow around the valve disk, such
as pressure distribution, flow pattern, velocity vectors, and form of vortex, we grasped flow
characteristics.

1. Introduction
A butterfly valve is a type of flow control device, used to regulate a fluid flowing through a section of pipeline
and so on. The butterfly valve is similar in operating way to a ball valve. A disc is positioned in the center of the pipe
typically and has a rod through it connected to an actuator on the outside of the valve. The actuator turns the disc
either parallel or perpendicular to the flow to control the flow. Regardless of valve position, the disc of a butterfly
valve is always positioned within the flow, therefore a pressure drop is always presented in the flow. A butterfly valve
is a type of valves called quarter-turn valves. Because fully opening the valve, the disc is rotated a quarter turn so that
it allows the fluid to go through in an almost unrestricted passage. There are some kinds of butterfly valves, and each
adapted for different pressures and different usage. In case of the high performance butterfly valve, features a slight
offset in the disc, which increases the valve's sealing ability and decreases its wearing. For these butterfly valves, the
flow coefficient and the loss coefficient are important characteristics to understand overall valve performance,
therefore we need to check it over carefully.
Some researchers have attempted to numerically predict flow in butterfly valve. Kim and Wu[1] studied the flow
pattern, velocity distribution and flow coefficient of butterfly valve through two-dimensional numerical analysis.
Huang and Kim[2] studied the velocity field and pressure distribution for three-dimensional incompressible flow in
butterfly valve. They also reported about the optimum design of the disk of butterfly valve for stable flow regulation,
smooth opening and shutting ability, and decrease of cavitation. The purpose of this work is to investigate flow
characteristics for two types of butterfly valve, single disk type butterfly valve and double disk type butterfly valve.
In this work, the computational calculation and analysis have made to investigate the flow in single disk type
butterfly valve and double disk type butterfly valve for water supply and drainage pipeline by using the CFD
code FLUENT. These computational results, the flow coefficient and the loss coefficient for various opening rate
of each valve, were compared with experimental results. Flow characteristics around the valve disk, such as
pressure distribution, flow pattern, velocity vectors, and form of vortex, were also investigated and discussed.

2. Valve characteristics
The valve flow coefficient and the valve loss coefficient to evaluate general performance of a valve
calculated through numerical method in this work are defined as follows. These valve characteristics are


c 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd 1
25th IAHR Symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 12 (2010) 012099 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/12/1/012099

generally obtained by experimental method because of pressure drop between upstream and downstream of
valve.
2.1 Valve Flow Coefficient
The valve flow coefficient have respect to valve type, diameter of valve, opening rate of valve and operating
fluids. This valve flow coefficient is an important characteristic to investigate a valve performance and
determined by differential pressure between upstream and downstream. In case of the specified differential
pressure (△P = 1 psi) with temperature 5 ~ 40℃ of water, the valve flow coefficient is defined as Equation
(1)[9,10]
⎛ G ⎞
C v = 1.167Q ⎜ ⎟ (1)
⎝ ΔP ⎠
2.2 Valve Loss Coefficient
The fluid in a piping system passes through various valves, bends, elbows, inlets, exits, enlargements, and
contractions in addition to the pipes. These components interrupt the flow of the fluid and cause additional losses
because of the flow separation and mixing. A partially closed valve may cause the largest head loss in the system
by the drop in the flow rate. Flow through valves is very complex, and a theoretical analysis is generally not
plausible. Therefore these losses, called the valve loss coefficient is determined experimentally and expressed as
another representation of relation between pressure difference, fluid density and fluid average velocity following
Equations (2)[9,10].
u2
ΔH = K [SI and British unit]
2g
(2)
γu 2
ΔP = K [SI unit]
2g

3. Experimental method
The experimental apparatus to measure flow rate was constituted by IEC60534-2-3(1997)[2], which used a
reservoir for recirculating water, throttling valves on upstream and downstream, thermometer, electromagnetic
flow meter, 400mm diameter pipes for test section including test valves(single disk type or double disk type
butterfly valve) and the pressure taps were located in 2D and 6D from each test valve as computational domain
for numerical study in Fig. 1. And then the flow rate was measured experimentally at 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%,
50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 100% rated opening of butterfly valves for single disk type and double disk type
under fixed differential pressure( ΔP = 1 psi) between upstream and downstream and these experimental data
were compared to the numerical results for validation.

4. Numerical method
The computational calculation and analysis using numerical method have made to investigate the flow in
butterfly valve used in water supply and drainage pipeline. For single disk type and double disk type butterfly
valves, the body of valve and the disk were modeled in three-dimensional. The computational domain was made
up according to IEC 60534-2-3 as Fig. 1. The three-dimensional models of the butterfly valves were comprised
of valve disk part and valve body part using pre-processor, GAMBIT of the commercial CFD code FLUENT. To
improve the computational efficiency, the nodes of the grid were clustered in valve disk compare to inlet and
outlet relatively. For each calculation cases, the unstructured grids were generated about 500,000 shown in Fig. 2
and adjusted in ±5,000.

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25th IAHR Symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 12 (2010) 012099 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/12/1/012099

Fig. 1 Computational domain

4.1 Scheme and algorithm
The numerical analysis has been carried out on the assumption that the flow in the butterfly valve was steady
state incompressible flow and the operating fluid was water in standard atmospheric pressure and temperature.
The second-order upwind scheme was used for descretization of governing equations and applied SIMPLEC
algorithm for revision of the velocity and pressure, the standard κ-ε model for turbulent flow. These scheme and
algorithm in this work have generally been applied to numerical study.
4.2 Initial condition and boundary condition
No slip boundary condition to consider fluid viscosity and generalized log wall function to define turbulence
intensity around wall were applied as solid boundary conditions. Inlet and outlet conditions were set as
differential pressure between upstream and downstream. Using the flow rate from experimental results and
conditions above, the valve flow coefficient and the valve loss coefficient were calculated numerically at 10%,
20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 100% rated opening of butterfly valve for single disk type and
double disk type butterfly valves.

(a) Single disk type butterfly valve

(b) Double disk type butterfly valve

Fig. 2 Schematics of the computational grid system

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25th IAHR Symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 12 (2010) 012099 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/12/1/012099

5. Results and discussion

The results of numerical and experimental study are shown in Fig. 3-4. Figure 3 shows the valve flow
coefficient and Fig. 4 shows the valve loss coefficient according to each opening rate of valve.
5.1 Comparison of valve flow coefficient
The experimental results of the butterfly valve were used for the validation of numerical results, valve flow
coefficient. Fig. 3 represents the valve flow coefficient relative to the maximum valve flow coefficient at each
opening rare of butterfly valve( Cv (%) = Cv / Cv max ) and the comparison between the numerical and experimental
results for two types of butterfly valve: single disk type and double disk type butterfly valve. As shown in Fig.3,
the difference between the numerical and experimental values is less than 6% in whole range of valve opening
rate, this results represent that the numerical analysis predict actual flow in butterfly valve properly.

(a) Single disk type butterfly valve (b) Double disk type butterfly valve
Fig. 3 Valve flow coefficient, Cv

5.2 Comparison of valve loss coefficient

The valve loss coefficients in log scale value of two types of butterfly valve are presented in the vertical axis,
and compared with experimental results in Fig. 4. For double disk type butterfly valve in Fig. 4(b), the difference
between the computational and experimental values is less than for Single disk type butterfly valve slightly. It
considered that this result was associated with the better water sealing ability of double disk type butterfly valve.

(a) Single disk type butterfly valve (b) Double disk type butterfly valve
Fig. 4 Valve loss coefficient, K

4
25th IAHR Symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 12 (2010) 012099 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/12/1/012099

5.3 Pathline
A pathline is defined as the actual path traveled by an individual fluid parcel over some time period and it is
Lagrangian concept which express the path of an individual fluid particle as it move around in the flow field.
Therefore pathlines are the useful way to understand the flow patterns. Fig. 5 shows the pathline around valve
disk on valve opening rate 50% for each type of valve. As shown in Fig. 5, the developed flow at the rear of
valve disk reattaches to the valve disk, and form some recirculating eddies. The pattern of recirculating eddies
for double disk type butterfly valve is more complex than single disk type butterfly valve. It is supposed valve
that this difference have resulted from the divided flow channel of the double disk type butterfly. Fig. 6 shows
the pathline around valve disk on valve opening rate 100% for each type of valve and displays a smoother
pathline for the double disk type butterfly valve than the single disk type butterfly valve slightly. This can be
explained that the cross section of the double disk type butterfly valve, which stacks up the fluid particles, is
smaller than the single disk type butterfly valve.

(a) Single disk type butterfly valve (b) Double disk type butterfly valve
Fig. 5 Pathline in butterfly valve (valve opening rate: 50%)

(a) Single disk type butterfly valve (b) Double disk type butterfly valve
Fig. 6 Pathline in butterfly valve (valve opening rate: 100%)

6. Conclusion
A side of view of the valve performance, the valve flow coefficient and the valve loss coefficient according
to the valve opening rate were calculated numerically and flow pattern around the disk of butterfly valve were
presented. The experimental results were used to validate the numerical results and we concluded that there was
not much in the valve performance between the single disk type butterfly valve and the double disk type
butterfly valve. However, the double disk type butterfly valve showed more complex flow pattern, recirculating
eddies, at the rear of valve disk compared with the single disk type butterfly valve. Through these comparisons,
we obtained that grid type, analytical models, initial and boundary conditions applied to numerical analysis have
made a description of the flow in butterfly valves to the purpose.

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25th IAHR Symposium on Hydraulic Machinery and Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 12 (2010) 012099 doi:10.1088/1755-1315/12/1/012099

Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Korea Water Resources Corporation and the second stage of the Brain Korea 21
Project.

Nomenclature
Cv The valve flow coefficient Q Volumetric flow rate[m3/hr]
G Specific Gravity of Water u Mean velocity in pipe [m/s]
K Valve head loss [m] g Gravity acceleration[m/s2]
ΔH The valve loss coefficient γ Specific weight[N/m3]
ΔP Differential pressure[N/m2]

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