Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling and Experimental Testing of Hydraulic Spool Valves

To have faster time to market one must reduce the required experiments needed to develop new products. In this paper, hydraulic spool valves were investigated and a comparison of actual experimental data to the results of Fluent simulation was made. This comparison included multiple standard turbulence models in addition to a custom version of GEKO k-omega. Along with turbulence models, different solver options were compared to evaluate their impact on the results. This data will help better correlate future simulations to experimental data, thus utilizing simulation to design and experiment to verify the final solution if required.