4. Flow Simulation in Choke Valves for Offshore Oil Industry

Flow control valves are essential to the oil industry through exploration and production phases. These valves must be capable of operating in offshore wells under an extremely high-pressure regime. In addition to contact with abrasive fluids, the flow occurs at high speed, which leads the equipment to suffer significant abrasive wear due to the high flow rates and pressure drops. This work aims to evaluate the flow through a drilling choke, using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) open-source software, OpenFOAM. The flow was evaluated for five stages of the valve’s opening and flow conditions (25.0, 26.0, 28.0, 30.5, and 35.0 percent open). The results were compared with the experimental data obtained from a water test proceeded in the oil industry. It was found that good adherence between numerical and experimental results for pressure drop and the simulations provided an extensive understanding of pressure and velocity fields, allowing to predict the areas of cavitation on choke valves.