ME 4232

Fluid Power Control Laboratory

Pilot Operated Pressure Relief Model

Fall 2007 – December 20th

Adam Kalthoff
Andy Marass
Shelley Fabry
Cameron Muelling

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Introduction
The goal of this project was to gain experience in modeling physical systems relating to a hydraulic
component. The component being investigated is a pilot operated pressure relief valve, which is a
common pressure relief valve used in hydraulic circuits. Hydraulic and mechanical principals were used
to define the operation the relief valve and govern the model of a computational software package. The
software package used to model the relief valve was Matlab with the Simulink application. This report
describes the structure, variables, methods, and analysis involved in modeling a pilot operated pressure
relief valve.

Relief Valves
A relief valve is a device which limits the fluid pressure in a hydraulic system to a preset maximum,
known as the full-flow pressure. Relief valves are most commonly used in parallel in a circuit rather than
in series. The pressure at which the valve starts relieving pressure is known as the cracking pressure. At
this point the excess flow is directed from main system and returns it directly to the reservoir. Direct-
acting and pilot-operated are the two main types of relief valves.

Direct Acting Relief Valve

Direct Acting relief valves are the less complex of the two relief valves. The direct acting relief valve uses
a ball (poppet) and a heavy spring to hold the poppet in place. When the system pressure overrides the
spring force, the system flow is diverted and the pressure is relieved. The advantage of the direct acting
relief valve is that its construction is simpler, and therefore less costly than the pilot operated relief
valve. One downfall of the direct acting relief valve is that it does allow a considerable amount of
pressure override making the valve less sensitive and efficient compared to the pilot operated relief
valve.

Pilot Operated Relief Valve

The pilot operated relief valve has a pilot stage and a balancing piston stage. The pilot stage is basically
a small direct acting relief valve, controlled by a spring-loaded poppet. The balanced piston stage
diverts flow once the poppet cracks and causes the unbalanced forces on the piston. The main
attraction in using a pilot operated relief valve is its ability to minimize pressure override. Pressure
override is the difference between the cracking pressure and the pressure at the inlet of the relief valve
when the valve is passing its maximum volume. The pilot operated relief valve is considered to be more
sensitive than the direct acting type.

Operation and Structure

The pilot operated relief valve is a two stage relief valve where the first stage is the pilot stage. This
stage houses the pressure limiting valve which is essentially a small direct acting relief valve that consists
of a poppet that is held against a seat by an adjustable spring. The purpose of the adjustable spring is to
allow the valve to be able to be set to other pressure relief setting depending on the requirements of
the system. The second stage is the balanced piston stage. This is where the hydraulic connections are

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made for the valve and because of that, this is where the diversion of the full flow volume is
accomplished by the balance piston. The balance piston is named this because this is where the
hydraulic balance takes place within the valve. The pressure of the inlet acting under the piston is also
felt on top of the piston by the means of an orifice that is drilled in the balancing piston. This allows the
piston to be held on its own seat by the means of light spring. When the pressure in the valve reaches
the setting that lifts the poppet in the pilot stage off the seat there is a pressure decrease in the upper
chamber of the second stage piston which results in an unbalance in the hydraulic forces. When the
hydraulic imbalance overcomes the mechanical force of the spring the poppet is unseated. After the
pressure difference between the upper and lower chambers of the valve is sufficient enough, the
balance piston will completely unseats itself and allow full-flow directly to the reservoir of the system.
This will continue until the pressure through the valve reduces the system pressure to a pressure less
than the pressure setting of the valve.

Valve Choice
The current pilot operated relief valve used in the Fluid Power Lab was chosen to be the valve used for
the model. The valve used is lab is a RPEC-KDN from Sun Hydraulics. A diagram of the valve is shown in
figure X.

Figure 1: Diagram of the RPEC-KDN pilot operated relief valve

The RPEC model is a 2 port, cartridge type relief valve. The capacity is 25gpm and the maximum
operating pressure is 5000 psi. This particular valve has a knob adjustment for the spring displacement,
which allows for 5 turns of adjustment. The knob turns on a M20 screw with 1.5 mm Pitch, which
means each turn on the knob is 1.5mm (0.059 in) in spring displacement. The maximum spring
displacement allowed is 0.295 inches. The adjustment range is from 25-800 psi as specified by the
manufacturer. The cartridge material is aluminum and the internal poppet and balancing piston are
made of stainless steel. There are two springs inside the cartridge made of steel.

Mathematical Modeling
The first step in developing the model for the pilot-operated relief valve involved determining how far
the poppet and the balance piston will moves. This was accomplished by determining the transfer
functions for both the poppet and the balance piston by first deriving the free body diagrams for both of
the parts, which are shown below.

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 Figure 2: Block Diagram of Poppet Figure 3: Block Diagram of Balanced Piston
These diagrams allowed the transfer functions to be found for both of parts by summing the forces that
are acting on both of the parts (see below).
𝑚1 𝑥1 + 𝐵1 𝑥1 + 𝑘1 𝑥1 + 𝐹𝑖 = 𝑃2 𝐴3 [1] 𝑚2 𝑥2 + 𝐵2 𝑥2 + 𝑘2 𝑥2 + 𝑃2 𝐴7 = 𝑃𝑆 𝐴1 [2]
where
A1: Frontal area of the balance piston K: Spring constant
A3: Frontal area of the poppet ball B: Damping constant
A7: Postal area of the balance piston M: Mass
Ps: System Pressure Fi: Preload on the spring
P2: Pressure after the balance piston orifice
Note: 𝑥 = 𝑥𝑓 − 𝑥𝑖 , where 𝑥𝑓 is the final position and 𝑥𝑖 is the initial position of the object.
From the sum of forces, the transfer functions were found to be the following:
𝑃2 𝐴3 /𝑚1 − 𝐹𝑖 /𝑚1 𝑃𝑆 𝐴1 /𝑚2 − 𝑃2 𝐴7 /𝑚2
𝑋1 𝑠 = 2 [3] 𝑋2 𝑠 = 2 [4]
𝑠 + 𝐵1 /𝑚1 𝑠 + 𝑘1 /𝑚1 𝑠 + 𝐵2 /𝑚2 𝑠 + 𝑘2 /𝑚2
where the input of the transfer function is the difference between the spring force and the force due to
the pressurized fluid in the system, and the output of the transfer function is the displacement of the
object.
This also allowed the damping constant (B) for both of the parts to be determined by deriving them in
terms of their natural frequency (𝜔𝑛 ) along with their damping ratio (𝜉), and this was accomplished by
comparing the bottom of each of the transfer functions to the following equation:
𝑠 2 + 2𝜉𝜔𝑛 𝑠 + 𝜔𝑛2 [5]
𝜔𝑛 1 = 𝑘1 /𝑚1 [6] 𝜔𝑛 2 = 𝑘2 /𝑚2 [7]
𝜉1 = 𝐵1 /(2 𝑘1 𝑚1 ) [8] 𝜉2 = 𝐵2 /(2 𝑘2 𝑚2 ) [9]
The following assumptions were made: mass of the spring was negligible, hydraulic fluid is 100%
incompressible, and the fluid forces above the pilot piston are negligible.

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Solid Model with Areas and Mass

Figure 4: General Schematic from Sun Hydraulics

From the Sun Hydraulics website catalog the three dimensional CAD model was downloaded into
SolidWorks®. The solid model is shown in figure 5 was used in conjunction with figure 4, the different
attributes and components of the pilot operated relief valve were understood through these two
figures. The different areas used in the MATLAB® equations to find the various forces acting upon the
balancing piston and poppet were found in SolidWorks®.

Figure 5: Cut view of Pilot Operated Relief Valve

Once the important physical characteristics were identified, the areas of importance were found as
shown in figure 6. Figure 6, inset balancing piston, shows that there is an inlet screen on the orifice area
A2, for this analysis the orifice screen effects were assumed to be negligible. The different areas shown
in the figures need some interpretation. Most of the areas are shown correctly, such as: A2 – cross
sectional area of the balancing piston orifice, A4 – cross sectional area of pilot stage, A5 – cross sectional

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area of all three pilot stage bleed off ports, and A6 – cross sectional area of all eight balancing piston
bleed off holes. The last two areas are defined by a total area subtracted from an orifice area shown as
follows: A1 – cross sectional area of the balancing piston stage minus area two (orifice) and A 7 – cross
sectional area immediately after balancing piston minus area two (orifice). The motivation to subtract
area two from area one and seven stems from finding the forces that will be exerted on the balancing
piston. The found areas are listed in table 1.

Inside cut Outside perspective Inset Balancing Piston

Figure 6: Cross Sectional Area Identification for Analysis

Area In2
A1 0.1104813
A2 0.0002011
A4 0.1971357
A5 0.0037699
A6 0.0746505
A7 0.1298994
Table 1: List of important areas
To estimate the mass of the poppet and the balancing piston, Pro/Engineer was used to generate a solid
model. The dimensions provided by Sun Hydraulics on the RPEC-KDN were used with some estimation

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in the geometry. Once modeled, the mass properties feature of Pro/Engineer was used with the
𝑙𝑏𝑓
material being stainless steel at a density of 0.29 .
𝑖𝑛 3
Mass of the poppet = M1 = 0.0048 lbf
Mass of the balancing piston = M2 = 0.0135 lbf

Figure 7: Poppet solid model Figure 8: Balancing piston solid model

Spring and Damping Coefficients

To continue with the system model, the spring constants needed to be found using the spring force on
the poppet. The spring force is an important model parameter and also defines the spring constant.
The spring force is a function of the number of turns of the knob on the valve. As the knob is turned, the
spring is compressed increasing the force that is exerted on the spool, varying the cracking pressure.
1 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 1.5 𝑚𝑚 1 𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ
1 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛 = 0.059 𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ [10]
1 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛 1 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 25.4 𝑚𝑚
To convert the displacement into the force of the spring, we used the equation:
𝐹𝑠 = 𝐹𝑖 + 𝑘 ∙ 𝛥𝑥 [11]
Fi is the initial cracking pressure before the knob is turned times the area of the poppet, k is the
spring constant, and Δx is the displacement of the spring. To find the value of k we assumed
that the maximum cracking pressure would occur when the spring reaches maximum
compression.

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 Figure 9: Cracking Pressure versus Pilot Valve Turns
Since accurate measurements were made with 2-5 turns, the spring constant calculation was
done in this region.
Fs = maximum cracking pressure (5 turns)
= (760 psi) (0.0113 in2)
= 8.59 lbf
Fi = cracking pressure (2 turns)
= (250 psi) (0.0113 in2)
= 2.83 lbf
𝛥𝑥 = 3 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑠 0.059 𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 = 0.177 𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 [12]
𝐹𝑠 − 𝐹𝑖 5.76 𝑙𝑏𝑓 𝑙𝑏𝑓
𝑘1 = = = 32.5 [13]
𝛥𝑥 0.177 𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ
K2 is the spring acting on the balancing piston, which is designed to be less than K1 allowing for quick
piston movement once the poppet cracks. Without experimental data to calculate K 2, an estimated
value must be used. An appropriate K2 estimation is 30% of K1, which is about 10 lbf/inch.

From the equation 5 through equation 9, the damping coefficients were found to be the following:
𝐵1 = 2𝜉2 𝑘1 𝑚1 [14]

𝐵2 = 2𝜉2 𝑘2 𝑚2 [15]
where the values of the equations were assumed to be the following:
ζ=1.1 to represent a slightly over damped system
K1 = 32.5 lbf/inch
K2 = 10 lbf/inch

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Resulting:
B1 = 0.87 lbm/s
B2 = 0.81 lbm/s

SIMULINK® Model

The number of turns, system pressure, and the tank pressure were modeled as the inputs to the pilot
operated relief valve. The valve and test system were constructed using SIMULINK®. Several key
operations were identified as necessary steps in modeling the relief valve. These operations were
largely handled by using MATLAB® functions and transfer functions. Supporting MATLAB® user defined
functions were used to determine and define variables, pressure 2, flow through orifice 1, and flow
through orifice 2.

A diagram of the SIMULINK® model is shown below in figure 10. The number of turns is input into the
MATLAB® function “Spring Force”, which outputs the force exerted by the spring. This force is then
input to the “force to cracking pressure” function, which outputs the system cracking pressure. The
cracking pressure is then subtracted from the system pressure and multiplied by the area of the frontal
side of the stage one poppet to get a force. This force is then feed into a switch which ensures that only
positive forces are sent into the transfer function. Having only positive forces, the spool can only move
to create a positive area and therefore a positive flow rate based off of our orifice equations, Equation
16 and 17. Flow-rate through the hole is represented by Q; Cd represents the coefficient for the
equation, it is usually a number between 0.7 and 1.0; ρ is the density of the fluid, in this case hydraulic
fluid is 0.0332 lb/in3; A(x) is the area based on the displacement of corresponding spool; and P
represents pressure, the difference in the pressure across the orifice drives the fluid flow.

2
𝑄2 = 𝐶𝑑 𝐴6 𝑥 𝑃 − 𝑃2 [16]
𝜌 𝑠𝑦𝑠

2
𝑄1 = 𝐶𝑑 𝐴5 𝑥 𝑃 − 𝑃1 [17]
𝜌 2

Two more switches were added to control the flow rate though the relief valve, switch1 and switch2.
The orifice can only open a certain distance and therefore a maximum area (A6(x) and A5(x)). Switch4
however is used to control the second spool displacement. This switch only allows spool 2 to move if
spool 1 has already moved.

The equation used in the simulation to find the pressure in the upper chamber of the second stage
(Pressure2) could have been derived in two different ways, both equations are shown below. The first
of which was used in the SIMULINK® model. This equation is validated by knowing that at no flow and at
full flow the velocity and acceleration of the spool is known to be zero.

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𝑃𝑆𝑦𝑠 𝐴1 − 𝐾2 𝑥2
= 𝑃2 [18]
𝐴7
𝐹𝑖 − 𝐾1 𝑥1
= 𝑃2 [19]
𝐴7

Figure 10: Relief valve sub-system

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 Figure 11: Component diagram

Analysis

After the valve was constructed it was placed in a test circuit with a pump and an actuator.
Observations were made by changing the number of turns on the pressure relief valve from zero to five.
To compare the orifice equation in each setting, 0 turns through 5turns, Figure 12 was created as a
composite graph with all the information. Figures 13 through 18 show the flow rate, system pressure,
and cracking pressure as a function of time for each of the above mentioned settings. Observed in all of
the system pressure graphs is an increase at about 1.25 seconds, this signifies the actuator reaching full
extension. From the flow rate graphs it is seen that the as the number of turns increases the flow rate
seems to “delay”, this represents the pressure building up to the cracking pressure. Also noticed in the
flow rate graphs is a peak around 3.5gpm which is the full flow for the system, this signifies that all of
the flow is diverted from the main system to the reservoir. The cracking pressure increases as the
number of turns increases. If the graphs are used to compare results, it can be seen that at the time the
system pressure crosses the corresponding cracking pressure the valve begins to allow flow, which is
what is expected.

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 Q = Constant*sqrt(DeltaP)
3.5

2.5
Flow Rate (gpm)

1.5

0
1 1
2
0.5 3
4
5
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Sqare Root of Pressure (psi)

Figure 12: Flow versus square root of pressure

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Figure 13: Flow Rate, System Pressure and Cracking Pressure for 5 turns

Figure 14: Flow Rate, System Pressure and Cracking Pressure for 4 turns

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Figure 15: Flow Rate, System Pressure and Cracking Pressure for 3 turns

Figure 16: Flow Rate, System Pressure and Cracking Pressure for 2 turns

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Figure 17: Flow Rate, System Pressure and Cracking Pressure for 1 turn

Figure 18: Flow Rate, System Pressure and Cracking Pressure for 0 turns

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