The failure of a drilling pump is always due to the break of the drilling pump valve, which is one of the most important but also the weakest parts of the drilling pump. Over the decades, the degradation of drilling pump valves has been investigated extensively and various failure mechanisms have been proposed. However, no experimental test on the fluid has been successfully performed to support some of these mechanisms. In this paper, tests of the flow within the valve play are carried out to investigate the factors resulting in the failure of the valve. In the tests, particle image velocimetry(PIV) technology is employed to measure the flow field distribution of the valve play in the model. From these tests, the distributions of velocity and vorticity of fluid in various valves with different valve angles and different valve lifts are obtained, from which the features of flow fields are derived and generalized. Subsequently, a general rule of the influence of valve angles and valve lifts on the flow velocity is concluded according to chart analyses of maximal velocities and mean velocities. Finally, an analysis is made on the possibility of valve failure caused by erosion and abrasion in a working valve, with the application of the failure mechanisms of drilling pump valves. PIV measurement improves the study on the failure of the drilling pump valve, and the results show good agreement with previous computational fluid dynamics(CFD) simulations.
