Numerical Simulations on Throttle Characteristic With Large Pressure Drop and Optimal Design of the Orifice Plate

The orifice throttle pipelines with large pressure drop suffer damages from two aspects: high frequency vibration caused by cavitation and low frequency vibration caused by high flow velocity. In order to solve the vibration phenomenon of typical throttling pipe with large pressure drop in the system of nuclear power plant, the key hydraulic characteristics such as pressure drop, flow velocity, streamline and eddy current were simulated and analyzed for single-stage orifice throttling pipe. The negative pressure area was found in the downstream of the orifice, where cavitation occurred. Eddy current was formed due to the large local velocity caused by the orifice plate jet. Then, the throttle performance of multi-stage concentric orifice plates was evaluated by means of blockage pressure drop method. The cavitation damage was relieved greatly. But it was not eliminated, especially in the last stage orifice. The expanding type five-stage orifice plate was designed according to pressure drop stage-decreasing principle, with which the possibility of cavitation was eliminated but large pressure drop resulted in large flow velocity at the downstream of the first orifice plate. Multi-stage eccentric orifice plate was designed with the consideration both in cavitation characteristics and velocity distribution, which could eliminate the harm of cavitation and reduce the low frequency vibration caused by large flow velocity to a maximum extent. As a result, multistage eccentric orifice plates could be recommended as an optimized design scheme for the vibration control of the orifice piping with large pressure drop.