Yay! Paper finally published that is the result of ~10 years of on and off work.
Then after writing and revision, the thesis was published in 2013. https://hdl.handle.net/11299/159593
I posted it as a preprint, https://dx.doi.org/10.31224/osf.io/N7AJQ
Submitted to a journal and the reviews said it needed some experimental validation. Which is a fair criticism.
My advisor brought on an undergrad research student to setup some experiments with the valve and get some data. I really didn't have the time to put in any effort to this kind of testing.