Flow Control for a Two-Stage Proportional Valve with Hydraulic Position Feedback

The current research mainly focuses on the flow control for the two-stage proportional valve with hydraulic position feedback which is named as Valvistor valve. Essentially, the Valvistor valve is a proportional throttle valve and the flow fluctuates with the change of load pressure. The flow fluctuation severely restricts the application of the Valvistor valve. In this paper, a novel flow control method the Valvistor valve is provided to suppress the flow fluctuation and develop a high performance proportional flow valve. The mathematical model of this valve is established and linearized. Fuzzy proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is adopted in the closed-loop flow control system. The feedback is obtained by the flow inference with back-propagation neural network (BPNN) based on the spool displacement in the pilot stage and the pressure differential across the main orifice. The results show that inference with BPNN can obtain the flow data fast and accurately. With the flow control method, the flow can keep at the set point when the pressure differential across the main orifice changes. The flow control method is effective and the Valvistor valve changes from proportional throttle valve to proportional flow valve. For the developed proportional flow valve, the settling time of the flow is very short when the load pressure changes abruptly. The performances of hysteresis, linearity and bandwidth are in a high range. The linear mathematical model can be verified and the assumptions in the system modeling is reasonable.

Analysis of the possibility of using high-speed pneumatic directional valves to regulate the flow of compressed air

Most often, proportional flow valves or flow servovalves are used for position control of pneumatic drives. In case of this type of valves, flow characteristic of the valve represents a dependence of flow rate upon analogue control signal (voltage or current). The paper presents experimental studies of two high-speed pneumatic 3/2 directional valves (3-way 2-position) in order to determine the flow characteristics and flow parameters. One has analysed the option to use the directional valves to control the flow rate of compressed air using frequency-based signals.

A Novel Control Strategy for Pilot Controlled Proportional Flow Valve With Internal Displacement-Flow Feedback

The present study is focused on the construction of a well-performing pilot controlled proportional flow valve with internal displacement-flow feedback. A novel control strategy for the valve is proposed in which the flow rate through the valve is directly controlled. The linear mathematical model for the valve is established and a fuzzy proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller is designed for the flow control. In order to obtain the flow rate used as feedback rapidly and accurately in real-time, back propagation neural network (BPNN) is employed to predict the flow rate through the valve with the pressure drop through the main orifice and main valve opening, and the predicted value is used as the feedback. Both simulation and experimental results show that the predicted value obtained by BPNN is reliable and available for the feedback. The proposed control strategy is effective with which the flow rate through the valve remains almost constant when the pressure drop through the main orifice increases and the valve can be applied to the conditions where the independence of flow rate and load is required. For the valve with the proposed control strategy, the nonlinearity is less than 5.3%, the hysteresis is less than 4.2%, and the bandwidth is about 16 Hz. The static and dynamic characteristics are reasonable and acceptable.