Ball Valve

Public Projects, Case Studies & Resources

As a specific type of quarter-turn valve, a ball valve employs an empty, punctured, and rotating ball device to control the fluid flow through it. When the ball’s hole is in line with the flow, the valve is operational, and closes when it is pivoted 90-degrees using an external handle. In this valve application guide, find some of our most popular public projects where you can learn how to analyze your design, evaluate the ball valve flow coefficient, perform a fluid flow (CFD) analysis, and find the ball valve pressure drop. On this page, you can also find relevant resources from our blog. What’s more? Hear what our customers with similar valve applications have to say about working with SimScale.

Typical Ball Valve Applications

These types of valves can be applied in a variety of use cases, including but not limited to:

Flow, pressure control, and shut off for corrosive fluids, slurries, normal liquid, and gases
Oil and natural gas industry applications
Chemical storage

Why Is Online Simulation with SimScale Needed for This Application?

Ball valve applications need to be analyzed in the early design process to ensure design validation and, more specifically, optimize pressure drop and force behavior of the device.

Using cloud-based simulation from SimScale, you can evaluate the given pressure drop, fluid flow patterns, and force behavior. Using online evaluation, pressure drop can be reduced and design strengths and weaknesses can be determined early in the design process, allowing for fast optimization.

Search our public project library for user-generated ball valve simulations

Browse Projects

CFD Analysis of Water Flow Through a Ball Valve

This public project explains how to internally mesh a ball valve, and then simulate its operation when water flows through it. For this experiment, the floating ball of the valve is characterized by a hollow cylinder through its center, with a diameter equal to the inner one of the pipelines. You can visualize re-circulation, as well as the critical areas of the ball valve pressure drop.

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Ball Valve Simulation with Incompressible Fluid Flow

This public project explains how to internally mesh a ball valve, and then simulate its operation when water flows through it. For this experiment, the floating ball of the valve is characterized by a hollow cylinder through its center, with a diameter equal to the inner one of the pipelines. You can visualize re-circulation, as well as the critical areas of the ball valve pressure drop.

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CFD Analysis of Water Flow Through a Ball Valve

This project demonstrates how you can run a turbulent flow simulation of a ball valve and assess the ball valve flow coefficient.

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EJ Consulting Increased the Size of Their Valve Quickly with SimScale

“With the simulations done on SimScale, we characterized the valve (original goal), and gained much greater insight into the interaction between the valve and the fluid at each valve position. This will help us provide a better analysis in the future. SimScale has proved to be for the firm a flexible and scalable tool, which was critical for a HUBZone firm like ours.”

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Diinef reduced pressure drop and minimized cavitation damage risk in hydraulic valves with SimScale

“Approaching the design process using simulation with SimScale allowed Diinef to avoid a costly and slow testing process of physical models in the early stages of the project.”

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Quantex used SimScale to test and optimize the design of its disposable pumps

“At Quantex, the SimScale platform gives us access to powerful tools, in an economic package. The support is outstanding and helps add the most value to our engineering capabilities.”