EME150A - Well Pressure Relief Valve

It's been a long while since I've posted anything on here. Figuring since finals just ended for school I would add something. I have been working on a lot of projects at work machining things on the 5 axis machines. I could have easily picked from a handful of cool projects I have been working on but none of them were completely my own. Sure I machined a blisk impeller that is pushing the limits of the CAM software developed by Esprit, but I didnt completely make the entire project from start to finish. So I thought I would document one of my projects I have been working on in one of my mechanical engineering classes.

In my Mechanical Design class EME150A, we continue to learn about static failure but dive into fatigue failure of mechanical structures. Who knew that steel can have an infinite fatigue life but aluminum parts have a finite life no matter how minimal the loading is? The class was very interesting and I learned a lot of information that can be applied to real world situations. Over the past quarter, we had two design projects. The first was to design an adjustable indoor bike rack. This project was fun and was the first time I was able to design a product now having a good basis of engineering fundamentals. The second design project was to design a well pressure relief valve and have an infinite fatigue life. After looking at what products were out there and researching the common materials, dimensions, pipe threads and designs, I came up with my own creation. After I generated the solid model and the manufacturing drawings, I was to analyze how strong the product was and to make sure that it had an infinite fatigue life. The picture below shows a cross section view of all the inner parts. The parts include: the body, top bonnet, spring, stopped disc, o-ring seal, and set screw.

The project had about ten design requirements, some of which included: must use standard pipe fittings, withstand outdoor environment, be made with standard machine tools, have a max flow of 25 gpm, withstand infinite pressure fluctuations from zero to 100 psi, have an adjustable pressure relief preset from 50-100 psi, and the adjustment must be locked once set. After doing all the calculations for the critical areas, it was found that the threads, body and disc would not fail as well as the spring would not fail under fatigue loading.

This project was fun to work on and it was nice to be given some freedom to exercise all of the theory that is taught in the classes. This class was my third upper division engineering class and more specifically it was my first mechanical engineering upper division that is specific to my major. I look forward to taking more of these classes.