Rotary valve

airflow of rotary valve in two positions

A rotary valve is a type of valve in which the rotation of a passage or passages in a transverse plug regulates the flow of liquid or gas through the attached pipes. The common stopcock is the simplest form of rotary valve. Rotary valves have been applied in numerous applications, including:

• Changing the pitch of brass instruments.
• Controlling the steam and exhaust ports of steam engines, most notably in the Corliss engine.
• Periodically reversing the flow of air and fuel across the open hearth furnace.
• Loading sample on chromatography columns

Use in brass instruments

Rotary valve for a double french horn

In the context of brass instruments, rotary valves are found on horns, trumpets, trombones, flugelhorns, and tubas. Many European trumpet players tend to favor rotary valves.^{[citation needed]} Trombone F-attachment valves are usually rotary valves.

Joseph Riedlin is credited with the rotary valve for brass instruments in 1832.

Rotary valves

Use in industry

In industry, a rotary valve (which can also be called airlock) is often used to enter or extract material from two chambers with different pressure level.

As part of the material exchange process, the valve is often used as a measuring or metering device.

Coates' International Ltd. has developed a spherical rotary valve for internal combustion engines which replaces the poppet valve system. The spherical rotary valve combustion engine possesses several significant advantages over the conventional poppet valve assembly, including significantly higher compression ratios.

Use in chromatography

Rotary valves are used for loading samples on columns used for liquid or gas chromatography. The valves used in these methods are usually 6-port, 2-position rotary valves.

See also

• Airlock
• Piston valve
• Rotary feeder
• Itala cars

This article relating to musical instruments is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e