The opening and closing component of a gate valve is a gate plate, and the direction of movement of the gate plate is perpendicular to the direction of the fluid. A gate valve can only be fully opened and fully closed, and cannot be adjusted or throttled. The gate valve has two sealing surfaces, and the most commonly used mode gate valve has two sealing surfaces that form a wedge shape. The wedge angle varies with the valve parameters, usually 50 degrees, and 2 ° 52 'when the medium temperature is not high. The gate of a wedge gate valve can be made as a whole, called a rigid gate; It can also be made into a gate that can produce slight deformation to improve its processability and compensate for the deviation of the sealing surface angle during the processing. This type of gate is called an elastic gate. Stainless steel gate valves are divided into 304 stainless steel gate valves, 316 stainless steel gate valves, and 321 stainless steel gate valves. The representation method is: Z41H-16P.

The types of stainless steel gate valves can be divided into wedge gate valves and parallel gate valves according to the sealing surface configuration. Wedge gate valves can be further divided into single gate type, double gate plate type, and elastic gate type.

; Parallel gate valves can be divided into single gate plate and double gate plate. According to the thread position of the valve stem, it can be divided into two types: rising stem gate valves and hidden stem gate valves. This type of valve should generally be installed horizontally in pipelines.

When opening the valve, when the lifting height of the gate is equal to 1:1 times the valve diameter, the fluid channel is completely unobstructed. However, during operation, this position cannot be monitored.

. In actual use, the vertex of the valve stem is used as a marker, that is, the position where it cannot be opened, as its fully open position. To consider the phenomenon of locking due to temperature changes, it is usually done by opening the valve to the top position and then reversing it by 1/2-1 turn as the position for fully opening the valve. Therefore, the fully open position of the valve is determined by the position of the gate (i.e. stroke).

Some gate valves have the stem nut set on the gate, and the handwheel rotates to drive the stem to rotate, thereby lifting the gate. This type of valve is called a rotary stem gate valve or a concealed stem gate valve.