A study of the sealing performance of a new high-pressure cone valve for deep-sea gas-tight water samplers

The cone valve plays an important role in high-pressure sealing applications. In this paper, a new high-pressure cone valve, based on the titanium alloy poppet-to-polyetheretherketone seat sealing structure, is proposed for deep-sea gas-tight water samplers. In order to study the sealing performance of the new valve, both the conforming poppet-seat contact model and the nonconforming poppet-seat contact model were evaluated. Finite element analysis based on the two models was performed and validated by experiments. The results indicate that the nonconforming poppet-seat contact model has a better sealing performance than the conforming poppet-seat contact model. The new cone valve also was applied in a gas-tight hydrothermal fluid sampler and successfully tested in a sea trial during the KNOX18RR cruise from 9 July to 12 August 2008. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4001204] Keywords: high pressure, cone valve, finite element analysis, deep sea