No abstract

Mud pumps, like those used in the field of oil well drilling, are typically of the reciprocating type and are designed to circulate drilling fluid under high pressure down the drill string and back up the annulus. automatic valves must be applied to the fluid end in order to grant the desired pumping effect. from the engineering point of view, the design of the valve geometry must ensure that the phenomenon of cavitation does not occur and that, during the pumping action, the stiffness of the reaction coil spring is able to avoid reaching the condition of end stroke of the valve.Cavitation consists in the development of vapour cavities in the liquid phase. Inside the cavities, the pressure is relatively low. When subjected to higher pressure, the voids implode and generate an intense shock waves that promote the wear for the components (i.e. valve, valve seat, etc.).a deep understanding of the fluid behaviour is crucial for an effective design.Transient CfD simulations of the valve opening have been performed using a non-Newtonian fluid model able to describe the drilling muds. after a deep literature review, the Herschel-Bulkley model was selected as the most suitable for emulating the drilling mud.With the abovementioned approach, the reaction spring and design the valve seat to avoid premature wear phenomena were properly designed.The simulations have been also done considering a Newtonian fluid behaviour, in order to better understand the importance of considering the non-Newton behaviour for an effective design.

Gearboxes are widely used in several applications ranging from the automotive to the industrial and robotic sectors. A planetary gearbox is a special kinematic gear arrangement that, taking advantage of a planet carrier, ensures high reduction ratios together with a very small design. Therefore, they are widely employed for transmissions which require a high power density. There are several fields of applications including, but not limited to, mechatronic, automation and wind power generation. To improve the design of new solutions, for performing monitoring activities on actual gearboxes and for the definition of maintenance schedules, the availability of physical models able to accurately describe the behavior of the system, both in healthy and damaged conditions, would represent a great support. Experimental and numerical studies of the behavior of gearboxes are already available in the literature. Nevertheless, while the experimental approaches are valid only for the specific configuration tested, the numerical techniques show limitations related to the computational effort required. This paper presents an innovative approach for the characterization of the behavior of two different geared transmissions. It is based on a hybrid approach that combines finite elements (FE) with analytical formulations. In detail, the solver computes separately the macro deformation of the bodies (numerical solution based on a coarse grid) and the contacts (solved analytically avoiding the need of mesh refinements). The computational effort is reduced significantly without affecting the accuracy of the results significantly. This approach was used to investigate and understand the vibro-dynamical behavior of a back-to-back test rig (typically used for the characterization of the surface fatigue strength of gears) and of an industrial planetary gearbox. The results obtained for the healthy -not damaged -gearboxes were compared with experimental measurements for both configurations in order to validate the hybrid approach. Once the models were validated, the same methodology was eventually used to study the effects of typical gear failures and in specifically surface fatigue (pitting), on the vibrational response. The capability to reproduce the effect of damages with the model of a gearbox represents the first indispensable step of a Structural Health Monitoring strategy. State-of-art and challenges are analyzed and discussed in the paper.