The use of check valves in the nuclear industry is of great importance from a safety precaution point ofview (McElhaney, 1995). Choosing check valves for these high-pressurized systems comes with agreat challenge. The valves causes what is called check valve slams when closing, leading to a hugepressure wave traveling through the system. To prevent this from happening calculations have to bedone to see what kind of forces are generated during a check valve slam. When the forces are known itis easier designing systems that will endure these slams. A commonly used software in the nuclearindustry is RELAP5 (Reactor Excursion and Leak Analysis Program), its main purpose is to calculatetransients in piping systems. This program can also be used when calculating a check valve slam. Buthow precise is the code compared to the real event? By doing an experiment measuring pressures created by swing check valves during slams, the codewas compared to real data and analyzed to decide what was of importance when modeling for thesetypes of simulations. The RELAP5 code was not initially designed to calculate transients during a check valve slam. This isclearly shown when the code overestimates the pressure waves in the system when using themanufacturer data for the check valve model. Matching the data from the simulations in RELAP5 withthe data recorded from the experiment is not easy. The parameters used for this have no connection tothe specifications for the check valve, which means that transients are hard to estimate withoutexperimental data.

This master´s thesis provides an overview of all designs of check valves, their usage and typical features. Main purpose of this work is to clear up the phenomenon of check valve slam and the other problems that occur during transients. The check valve slam was measured at the test rig in the hydraulic laboratory. For unsteady flow evaluation after pump shut down was used Gibson method. The dynamic characteristic was possible to create by results from this method. It was achieved without impact of the speed of sound in the fluid. This work also contains 2D transient CFD calculations, which was used for evaluation of the hydrodynamic torque acting on the hinge pin. This approach provides an option to calculate wide range of cases at the expense of not entirely exact geometry. The main contribution of the theoretical study at the beginning of this thesis is its entireness. It might give an important clue when right valve is selecting. For good choice of valve might be helpful to use dynamic characteristics in this thesis presented. Mentioned characteristics were created by new way and its background is in measurements and simplified CFD calculations.