MANUFACTURERS VOICE

Loose or bonded?
Rubber liners in butterfly valves.
In his latest article for Valve World, Gnter xler, Festo Didactic GmbH & Co. KG, brings you his personal views on technical developments and achievements in the flow control industry.

Figure.2

oday lets think about the difference between the liner lay-out in wafer Butterfly Valves. In general we can find there 2 different solutions. Either cylindrical or conical shaped rubber liner in loose or bonded application. Loos means, the liner can be removed from the body of the valve and there is no adhesion agent to glue the liner to the body. Whereas the bonded version requires a process to attach the liner permanently to the body or lets say the manufacturing procedure needs a vulcanisation of the liner to the valve body. Both versions having its advantage and disadvantage if its on reliability and life expectancy. If the liner is vulcanised to the body it will be more easy to handle it and especially for

Figure.1 www.valve-world.net

hard rubber liner qualities it is possible to machine the inner diameter as well as the face-to-face dimension afterwards so that the dimensioning is precisely done. Manufacturing and handling of the valve bodies needs a more difficult handling during the processing as the body itself needs as well to be handled together with the rubber material during vulcanisation means bigger machines and higher heat transfer and as well better and precise control of the process itself. For loose rubber liner there is a better flexibility for stock holding in the manufacturers place as the liner is exchangeable and for the manufacturing it might be easier to handle the vulcanisation as there is only the same material to be handled and no influence of other differently reacting materials.This technology does usually not allow a machining of body/liner together so the liner part has to be manufactured more precise and finishes during vulcanisation. If its on maintenance and life-cycle costs, the loose liner shall be the preferred version as it can be easily exchanged whereas the bonded version needs machining of the body removal of the old rubber liner together with the whole procedure of a manufacturing process. Now lets go back the shape of the liner. Cylindrical liner (Figure.1), requires a higher seating force to close the disc against the working media to avoid this, many manufacturer are delivering the valves in

different working pressure ratings (not PN). Realising this means that machining the disc in various diameters to accomplish a stronger and/or softer compression of the rubber liner. Negative result is always that the valve is not tight if the pressure increases above the basically indicated working pressure and additionally it requires a precise selection, ordering and handling procedure. The cylindrical rubber liner is subject to physical stress resulting from the compression of the liner/disc (Figure.2).This leads very fast to liner destruction. Useful is

Figure.3 October 2008 1

MANUFACTURERS VOICE
to be careful that the valve disc did not extend over the body measure as this will lead to damage of the disc. So please take care that the valve after shop/factory testing will be opened just 5% and packed and shipped in this condition.

Meet Gnter xler

Gnter xler has a long history within the valve industry. He graduated in Process Engineering and Mechanical Engineering in Stuttgart, Germany, holds a MBA degree in VWA as well as a Controlling degree and is a REFA Specialist. For more than 25 years, Gnter xler has worked for several companies in the valve business, companies such as J.M. Voith GmbH (Hydropower and Paper Machinery), Erhard GmbH (R+D Process Valves and project engineering), and Festo AG & Co. KG (Project Manager and Project Engineer Process Automation). He is also member of the IWA, ISA, and VDI German Engineer and he is multilingual as he speaks 5 languages, among which are German, English, French, Italian and Spanish. Gnter can be contacted under: OEX@DE.FESTO.COM

Figure.4

this design only and limited for ON-OFF applications with a low switching frequency. Advantage of the cylindrical shape is: The valve can be used either as left-to-close and/or as right-to-close version. The conical liner as shown in Figure.3 eliminates all these problematic circumstances, as the disc is touching the liner sidewise and therefore the diameter of the disc is not of such a huge importance. No adjustment of the disc diameter is required. To avoid a hard compression and overstress of the liner for this version an actuator is required who can be adjusted precisely means limiting the turning angle so that the compression of the rubber liner is just as strong as it is required to tighten the valve against the working pressure. An additional benefit is that the breakaway torque is lower which leads directly to smaller actuators and a longer lifetime of the valve itself. The following picture (Figure.4) shows the situation of different working pressure conditions in correlation to the turning angle of the valve: Some people may ask now for the adjustment of the Butterfly Valve in the open position? Hydraulic dynamic testing of those centric Butterfly Valves show, that there is no influence on the flow rate once the valve is 90 to 95% open (see Figure.5). This means, a adjustment of the turning angel in the OPEN position of a Butterfly Valve is not required/necessary. The situation is for all Butterfly Valves especially as we have seen here that a proper adjustment of the turning angle according to the existing working pressure conditions benefit in: Longer lifetime, smaller
2 October 2008

actuators and smooth operation of the valve throughout the entire lifetime. The last topic I want to point out this time is the supply of rubber lined Butterfly Valves. In most projects and installations I did in these years I have seen the Valve sets delivered to the job-site nicely packed in shrink-foil as the valve will be on the way several weeks up to several months exposed to salt atmosphere, hot weather conditions and UV radiation due to shipment and storage periods on the job site. Opening the packages usually shows the valves in CLOSED condition which is absolutely unacceptable (see Figure.6). If the valve remains closed after the final testing in the workshop and is packed in this condition, the compression of the valve disc and the rubber liner leads directly to some kind of sticking and as well some kind of vulcanisation and herewith to damage of the liner during the first cycle. A further problem of this condition is that during the installation, clamping between the flanges there will be a further compression of the disc and the rubber liner so that the required opening force increases tremendously and mostly the commissioning staff will use additional tools to solve the problem. This leads directly to irreparable damage of the rubber liner and leakage of the valve. Finally if you follow these indications I need to detail as well that you have Figure.5

Figure.6 www.valve-world.net