I have do nothing scientific, have done no testing, and have no numbers to back this up, but I've been thinking about this, so I thought I'd pass my thoughts by you guys and see what you think. What can I say? I'm a fan of Einstein's thought experiments.
I have two identical SRV's on two separate, but identical, piping systems and they're set to pop at the same pressure. The pressure profiles in my two piping systems are identical. In fact, everything about the setup is identical between the two except that one of the fluids is completely liquid, and the other completely gaseous. No two-phase flows.
Okay, so we ramp the fluid pressures up to the set point and the valves begin to open. As the liquid valve opens, a small amount of liquid comes out, the pressure drops quickly, and the valve closes. However, the gas should be a bit different. As its valve opens, a small amount of gas begins to leave the valve, but as it is a gas and enjoys its space, it begins to expand when it encounters the lower external pressures. It seems that more volume has to go through the valve, so it would tend to stay open a bit longer than the similar liquid valve. Since the period that the valve is open is longer, the chatter appears to have a lower frequency.
Your job is to see the angles I missed in my thinking. One possible angle is that the local pressure of the gas at the disc face drops quickly due to the expansion through the valve and the disc closes, only to encounter the pressure rebound caused by the system pressure, which quickly opens the valve again. I suspect there are a lot of little factors that I missed that would be helpful to know. Maybe we'll all come out of this learning a bit more on the way to figuring out what's going on 4 NoSoup4U.
Now, I have to ask: we are talking about chatter and not simmer here, right?