Patent Application
20180073652
The present disclosure relates to the field of fluid control components. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to the field of hydraulic valves and regulators used to control fluid operated devices, such as other valves and components including oilfield well drilling and production equipment, such as surface and subsea blowout preventers.
Hydraulic valves are used to control the opening and closing of hydraulically operated oilfield well drilling and production equipment such as additional valves or blowout preventers. Regulators are used to control the pressure in a hydraulic circuit to ameliorate pressure spikes which can occur when hydraulic valves in the circuit are opened or closed. Variable orifices are used to selectively pass pressure and fluid therethrough at levels between full fluid flow and pressure and no fluid flow and pressure, and thus regulate the fluid pressure downstream therefrom. Pressure regulators are used to maintain a desired pressure in the hydraulic control circuit. The hydraulic control circuit components are commonly provided with redundancy, to ensure that when required to, for example, operate a blowout preventer to close off a well bore being drilled, the hydraulic control circuit will deliver the required fluid in the required time with sufficient volume and pressure to close the blowout preventer.
One recurring limitation in hydraulic valves and regulators, which use pressurized fluid or an electromechanical actuator to cause at least one valve component to move with respect to another valve component, is stiction, which is the static friction present between two stationary surfaces in contact with one another. Typically, the force needed to overcome stiction to allow one surface to move with respect to the other is greater than the force needed to cause two surfaces in contact with each other to continue moving with respect to each other once movement therebetween has started. As a result, it is known in the art that up to 20% of the total force, and thus of the total energy, supplied to a hydraulic valve can be taken up to overcome stiction. In the regulator, where dead bands on the order of 20 to 30% are known to occur in current designs, hunting, or oscillating around the outlet pressure setpoint, is a continuing issue affecting the operation of the hydraulic circuit. Pressure oscillations in the line or conduit opened by the valve when a valve is opened on the order of 1400 psi decreases and 600 psi increases are known to occur.
An additional issue present in hydraulic circuit control components is reliability of the hydraulic control component due to wear and corrosion of the components, caused by the exposure of the components to erosive and corrosive hydraulic operating fluids, and by relative movement of the components with respect to each other. Corrosion and erosion of the relatively moving parts can generate debris tending to cause these components to become locked, or move erratically, with respect to each other, and corrosion, erosion and wear can cause sliding interface between components to leak, reducing the effectiveness and reliability of the hydraulic control circuit component. In either case, the hydraulic circuit component will require repair or replacement, which in a subsea environment is expensive where servicing of the components often requires the use of a submersible robot to remove or service a hydraulic circuit component. To prevent the hydraulic control circuit from becoming non-functional as a result of a failure of a hydraulic control component, and to reduce the number of service operation periods in which a submersible robot is used to replace components, subsea control systems often have even greater redundancy requiring even more redundant hydraulic circuits and attendant components, leading to even greater cost.
To help reduce wear, the hydraulic control circuit components which include sliding contact surfaces have been made from, or coated with, carbide materials. However relatively high stiction occurs between two closely fitted, but movable with respect to each other, carbide surfaces. As a result, to operate these hydraulic circuits, fluid maintained at relatively high pressures is required. A substantial amount of energy is used to pressurize the fluid, and large accumulators are needed to store the fluid under the high pressure. Because of the need for redundant components systems, these costs are magnified where stiction is a large factor in the operational energy needed to operate the valve.
Additionally, carbide based components are brittle in comparison to stainless steel components, and for example, where two such parts of a component must be moved into sealing engagement, slower component velocities resulting in lower engagement forces are used to ensure the components does not fracture, crack or create particles of the component which can become lodged between moving surfaces and lock the moving parts in place. As a result, slower valve operation than optimal results.
Embodiments herein provide a lower friction and higher wear and corrosion resistance sliding interface in hydraulic component sliding interfaces. In one aspect, the sliding interface includes single crystal coatings or inserts on the part surfaces in sliding contact.
In another aspect, the hydraulic component parts having sliding surface interfaces are configured of a single crystal material. In yet another aspect, those parts having a sliding surface are configured of single crystal sapphire. Alternatively, one of the parts having a sliding surface interface is configured of the single crystal material, for example single crystal sapphire, and the sliding surface of the other component is coated with, or includes an insert forming the sliding surface, of a single crystal material such as ruby.
In another aspect, the single crystal material can be sapphire or ruby, and one sliding surface can comprise ruby, and the other sapphire, either as a coating, an insert, or the composition of the entire part.
So that the manner in which the above recited features of the present invention can be understood in detail, a more particular description of the invention, briefly summarized above, may be had by reference to embodiments, some of which are illustrated in the appended drawings. It is to be noted, however, that the appended drawings illustrate only typical embodiments of this invention and are therefore not to be considered limiting of its scope, for the invention may admit to other equally effective embodiments.
Herein, hydraulic operating valves, regulators and other hydraulic control circuit components are configured wherein internal components thereof which move relative to one another or engage one another are configured of a single crystal material, such as ruby or sapphire, and as a result lower friction sliding interfaces, less component wear, and a reduction in the wear and corrosion of these components is achieved. Descriptions of applications of the single crystal material in a number of selected hydraulic circuit control components are provided herein. While not exhaustive of the applicability of the single crystal material, they are intended to provide exemplars of use of the single crystal material and not to limit the scope of the invention described herein.
Referring to
Body 110 further includes a cross bore 120 extending therethrough generally perpendicular to the portions of the inlet body passage 104 and the outlet body passages 110, 116 opening into the seal plate surfaces 106, 112. The drive actuator 130 extends inwardly of a first opening 132 of the cross bore 120 and thus into the body 100, and includes a drive rod 134 terminating inwardly of the body 110 in a threaded boss 136. An actuator, such as a mechanical or electromechanical drive, to push the drive rod 134 inwardly of the opening 132, is shown schematically as the force arrow “A”. Additionally, the actuator may be a hydraulically operated piston. The compensation actuator 140 extends inwardly of the second opening 142 of the cross bore 120 into the body 100. Compensation actuator 140 includes a compensation drive rod 144 which terminates inwardly of the valve 100 in a threaded compensation rod boss 146. In the embodiment, a spring, not shown but schematically represented by force arrow S, provides a return force to re-center the carrier 150 in the valve 10 between the seal plate surfaces 106, 110.
Referring to
As shown best in
The first and second seal elements 172, 174 are, in the embodiment, right cylindrical elements having the same outer diameter, the same bore 178 diameter and the same counterbore diameter. However, the inner diameter of countersunk opening of the first sealing element 172 facing the first seal plate 105 has a smaller diameter than the countersunk opening 180 of the second seal element 174 facing the second seal plate 111. The first seal element thus includes an annular seal face 181 having a first area extending between the counterbore 180 of the first seal element 172 and the outer diameter thereof, and the second seal element 174 includes an annular seal face 183 having a first area extending between the counterbore 180 of the second seal element 174 and the outer diameter thereof. The area of the second seal face 183 is greater than that of first seal face 181. The opening diameter of the countersunk opening 180 in the second seal element at the annular seal face is slightly less than the closest spacing “d” between the outlet passages 110, 116 at the second sealing surface 112, and the outer diameter of the outer surfaces 176 of the first and second seal elements 172, 174 is slightly larger than the largest distance “D” across the adjacent outlet passages 110, 116. A biasing element 158, such as the key seal structure illustrated in
In the embodiment, the first and second sealing plates 105, 111 providing the upper and lower sealing surfaces 106, 112 are provided as an insert 190, each having continuation passages extending therethrough to communicate with the inlet 104 and outlet passages 110, 116 of the body 100. In the embodiment, both of the inserts 190, and both of the two sealing elements 172, 174, are configured as a single crystal material. The single crystal material is preferably chosen from among a single crystal ruby and a single crystal sapphire. In operation, the carrier 150 is moveable in the direction of arrows A and S, to selectively align the passage formed through the tube 184 and the countersunk openings 180 therein with the inlet passage 104 and either one or the other of the outlet passages 106, 116 to allow flow from the inlet 102 to one of the outlets 108, 114, or to prevent flow from the inlet passage 104 to either one or the other of the outlet passages 106, 116 by aligning the annular sealing surface 190 to block the outlet passages 110, 116. These relative positions of the, bidirectional seal assembly 170 are shown in
In operation, the bidirectional seal assembly 170 is positionable to selectively allow, or block, fluid flow from inlet passage 104 to one of the outlet passages 110, 116. In
At higher inlet 104 pressures the reduction in force required to move the sealing elements 172, 174 and sealing surfaces 106, 112 with respect to each other is even more pronounced. At about 4500 psi inlet 104 pressure, the tungsten carbide to tungsten carbide interface requires over 15 lbf to begin moving, whereas the ruby to carbide interface requires under 12 psi to begin moving, and the ruby to sapphire interface requires less than 8 lbf to begin moving. Thus, at the lower pressure of about 1000 psi, a reduction in force of about 4 lbf, which is ⅓ that required for the carbide to carbide interface is used, is possible using a ruby to sapphire interface. At the higher pressure of about 4500 psi, a reduction in force of about 8 lbf, which is ½ that required for the carbide to carbide interface is used, is possible using a ruby to sapphire interface. It is believed that this is due to the lower electrical affinity of the surface of a single crystal material to an adjacent single crystal surface, as compared to that of a non-single crystal surface to a non-single crystal, or a single crystal, surface.
Referring now to
In addition to sapphire and ruby single crystal materials, the inventor hereof has discovered that a sliding interface comprising at least one zirconia surface results in reduced stiction as compared to a carbide-carbide sliding interface under the same operating conditions. For example, where one of the two surfaces having relative sliding motion with respect to each other is configured of Zirconia and the other of tungsten carbide, under the same operating conditions, a reduction of stiction, on the order of 20% as compared to a tungsten carbide—tungsten carbide sliding interface results. For example, the inventor hereof has found that the zirconium-yttria blend of approximately 3% Yttria, commonly referred to as tetragonal zirconia polycrystalline material or Zirconia 3T-TZP, used as one surface of the sliding interface, and tungsten carbide as the other surface of the sliding interface, resulted in a reduction of stiction compared to that of a tungsten—carbide-tungsten carbide sliding interface under the same loading conditions. Likewise, the inventor hereof has found that aluminum stabilized zirconia, also known as AZP, used as one surface of the sliding interface, and tungsten carbide as the other surface of the sliding interface, resulted in a reduction of stiction compared to that of a tungsten—carbide-tungsten carbide sliding interface under the same loading conditions. As an alternate embodiment, the use of tungsten carbide against Zirconia, for instance Zirconia 3T-TZP or AZP in sliding contact will also produce a low friction couple as a shear seal. Likewise, a zirconia-zirconia sliding interface will result in a reduction of stiction on the order of 50%.
In addition to having reduced stiction as compared to a carbide-carbide sliding interface, a zirconia-carbide interface has improved manufacturability as compared to sapphire of ruby materials. For example, the sealing elements 172, 174 can be manufactured from Zirconia 3T-TZP or AZP and the sealing plates 105, 111 manufactured of tungsten carbide. Thus, at the interface of the sliding seal plate surfaces 106, 112 and annular seal faces 181, 183 of
Additionally, ruby-carbide and sapphire-carbide sliding interfaces are also contemplated herein, wherein one of the sealing element 172, 174 and sealing plate 105, 111 is configured of a monolithic carbide such as tungsten carbide or configured from a base material such as stainless steel and the sliding surfaces are provided by spray coating a carbide, such as tungsten carbide thereon, and the other of the sealing element 172, 174 and sealing plate 105, 111 is configured of sapphire or ruby. For example, the inventor hereof has discovered that the sapphire—tungsten carbide interface has a reduced stiction as compared to the tungsten carbide-tungsten carbide interface on the order of 20%, although not as significant as opposed to the 50% possible with Sapphire against Sapphire or Zirconia against Tungsten Carbide. In addition, a sliding interface of a zirconia material and one of sapphire or ruby, a sliding interface where one surface is sapphire and the other is ruby, are specifically contemplated here.
Other devices using hydraulically operated pistons, such as a pressure regulator as shown in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/837,192, filed Aug. 27, 2015 and incorporated herein by reference can also benefit from the use of sapphire and ruby components.
As used herein, the use of zirconia, ruby and/or sapphire as the relative sliding surfaces, or combined with a carbide such as tungsten carbide as the other relatively sliding surface, as the components of the sliding interfaces results in a smaller dead zone, lower life as a result of lower wear and high corrosion resistance, and the ability to reduce the size of the stored energy components, such as springs, used to restore the hydraulic circuit component to its rest state.
As contemplated herein, ruby or sapphire, wherein ruby is a doped form of sapphire, are available in sheet or rod form from various supplier such as Saint Gobain of Milford N.H. The sapphire and ruby used herein were ½ light band ruby and 4RA and 2 light band sapphire. The parts, such as the sealing inserts and seal plate surfaces inserts were machined from these materials using diamond cutters, and then lapped to improve surface finish. Where the sliding interface surface is an insert attached to another component, such as a sealing plate assembly, one surface of the insert is metallized, and the metallized surface is then brazed or otherwise connected to an underlying metal component, such as a stainless steel component.
While the foregoing is directed to embodiments of the present invention, other and further embodiments of the invention may be devised without departing from the basic scope thereof, and the scope thereof is determined by the claims that follow.
This application claims benefit of U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 62/394,798, filed Sep. 15, 2016, which is herein incorporated by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 62394798 | Sep 2016 | US |
