Weight Reduction of 12'-150 Class Plug valve Casting Body by Finite Element Analysis and Experimental Method

摘要

Now-a-days cost of the materials is very high, so there is need to minimize the cost. For this purpose, it is necessary to optimum use of man, machine and material. So that's why it is essential to reduce the weight of the plug valve body.The stress analysis means determining the stress value of the valve body when internal pressure is applied. Ultimate aim of the current experiment is to reduce the casting weight of the body. The finite element method (FEM), sometimes referred to as finite element analysis (FEA), is a computational technique used to obtain approximate solutions of boundary value problems in engineering. Simply stated, a boundary value problem is a mathematical problem in which one or more dependent variables must satisfy a differential equation everywhere within a known domain of independent variables and satisfy specific conditions on the boundary of the domain. Boundary value problems are also sometimes called field problems. The field is the domain of interest and most often represents a physical structure. In the field of competition, all companies should supply their goods and services with high quality, in shortest period with lower prices than its competitors in order to keep their capacity and power to compete. Plug valves are machine elements which are commonly used for regulation of fluid, semi-liquid and granular medium flow on variety of tanks and pipeline systems. This experiment discusses FEA analysis of Plug–valve body followed by Experimental stress analysis using strain gauge method for weight reduction. New reduced weight models were prepared on the basis of validation of the results obtained from stress analysis procedure. The weight reduction is done by changing the wall and rib thickness. The results clearly shows the maximum weight reduction is 9.95 kg (7.11 % of original weight) while keeping maximum stress level up to 125.187 N/mm2 which is safe for the applied pressure as per standard