Fike’s Flow Laboratory is a general-purpose flow characterization laboratory for quantifying the performance of rupture discs, their performance in combination with a pressure relief valve, and any other device where flow capacity and/or resistance to flow must be determined. The flow lab plays a key role in the engineering, testing, validating and certifying processes to ensure unmatched reliability is found in every Fike rupture disc.

Transcript, by John Lopez

The role of the Flow Lab would be to perform tests to verify compliance for regulatory agencies and performance testing our products to make sure they perform the way we designed them to perform.

Some of the tests we perform would be a burst test where we just apply pressure to the rupture disc until it bursts. Whatever stamped burst pressure we have on our disc, it needs to be plus or minus five percent. We also perform a KR test, which is also known as a flow test. And that is where we quantify the quality of the disc once it’s open. Another test that we perform on a regular basis would be a cycle test. We cyclic load the disc using pressure that simulates how the disc would perform in a real life application.

If our disc did not perform the way it intended to, it can be catastrophic in certain scenarios.
The Flow Lab contributes to saving lives by ensuring our products do everything that we say they will do. The Flow Lab is important to Fike as a whole in our willingness to tackle tough problems, look at it from different aspects and not be afraid of dealing with issues that we know are going to be a lot of work. But I think that we like the challenge.