Experimental Investigation of the Cylinder Block Movement in an Axial Piston Machine

The greatest share of hydromechanic and volumetric losses in axial piston machines are produced within the tribological interfaces piston / cylinder, cylinder block / valve plate and slipper / swash plate. Hydrostatic and hydrodynamic effects are used to minimise the sum of solid friction, viscous friction and throttle losses. Other tribological interfaces have minor influence on efficiency losses in most operating points in machines of this type. This paper focuses on experimental investigations with the objective to acquire further knowledge on the cylinder block / valve plate contact. The investigations are part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation in which experimental and simulative investigations are combined to identify the effects influencing this tribological interface. The experiments focus on the multi-directional movement of the cylinder block and the friction torque within the contact. Therefore a test rig was built, capable of measuring the cylinder block movement in all degrees of freedom and the friction torque between both parts. A sensor system is built around a standard rotary group of an axial piston pump with a spherical cylinder block / valve plate contact. The pump functionality is maintained and measurements under standard operating conditions up to 30 MPa are possible. Procedures of the design process and descriptions of the measuring system are presented, followed by results of the cylinder block movement measurement, comparing the behavior under different pressure levels and speeds.

Development of a Method to Evaluate CNG-Injection Valves

The development of combustion engines with direct injection requires a comprehensive knowledge of the in cylinder combustion process as well as the used high pressure injection system. One main characteristic of injection systems is their mass flow over time behavior. For prevalent diesel and gasoline injection valves (injectors) fully developed simulation models as well as test benches are available to analyze the injection process. Besides the established engines a trend towards compressed natural gas (CNG) engines in passenger cars is recognized. Due to the small injection duration of a few milliseconds, the flow rate measurement is particularly challenging and requires highly dynamic measuring. The existing test benches are designed and optimized for liquid fuels and are only partly suitable for the evaluation of gaseous fuels such as CNG. A typical test method is to inject fuel into a long tube in which a pressure wave propagates. Based on the pressure signal the mass flow of the injected fuel is approximated. For gaseous fuels the correlation of mass flow and pressure propagation is only known for specific test cases and therefore the method is not directly applicable to gaseous fuels. This paper presents a newly designed measurement device to evaluate the mass flow rate as well as the injector needle displacement during an injection process of gaseous fuels. The test bench is designed to operate in a fully equipped injection system including gas lines, common rail and injection valves, to also investigate the interaction of the individual system components. The design is based on a closed test chamber in which the pressure rises during the injection. To overcome the influence of propagating pressure waves inside the chamber on the measurement, different chamber designs are evaluated. An optimized design, separating the chamber into two volumes which are connected by a damping sleeve, is presented. The injection itself is carried out in a first volume and the measurement is conducted in a second damped volume. Based on the measured pressure the mass flow rate through the injection valve is approximated, utilizing the equations of thermodynamics.

Sensitivity Analysis for the Operating Efficiency of an Axial Piston Pump

Axial piston pumps of swash-plate type are extensively used in off-highway machines to convert rotating mechanical power into hydraulic power. Efficiency of such pumps is of considerable importance to hydraulic design engineers. Many researchers have tried to create mathematical models for describing pump efficiency. These models are typically a system of nonlinear algebraic equations dependent upon a total of four variables (pressure, speed, temperature, displacement) and a set of experimentally determined coefficients. Since these models are not of the a-priori type, they are not of much value to a design engineer who is trying to design an efficient pump. Others have tried to use physics based models and numerical programs to accurately predict the influence of component design on efficiency. Such programs are considerably slow to run and of not much use to a design engineer who needs to make quick decisions. Hence the objective of this paper is to understand the sensitivity of various design parameters on the total efficiency of the pump by conducting a dimensionless parameter study of a large set of pump design parameters. Using this method it will be shown that a small group of design parameters have the highest influence on the efficiency of these pumps.

CFD Analysis of Gerotor Lubricating Pumps at High Speed: Geometric Features Influencing the Filling Capability

The paper presents an extensive analysis of the influence on the suction capacity of the main geometric parameters of gerotor lubricating pumps. The study was carried out using a CFD model developed with the commercial software PumpLinx®. The model of a reference gerotor unit was validated experimentally in terms of delivered flow rate in different operating conditions, in open and closed circuit configuration. In the former case different geometries of the inlet pipe were tested. In the latter the influence of the suction pressure at constant speed was analysed. After the model validation, several geometric features were changed to assess their influence on the volumetric efficiency in conditions of incomplete filling, such as the thickness and the diameter of the gears, the position of the inlet pipe with respect to the rotors (radial, axial and tangential), the shape of the port plate.

Vane Pump Power Split Transmission: Three Dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling

A three dimensional CFD analysis of a novel vane pump power split transmission is studied in this paper. The model was built using PumpLinx®, a three-dimensional CFD commercial code developed by Simerics Inc.® The Mathers Hydraulics® vane pump is a double-acting vane pump with a floating ring. By coupling the floating ring to an output shaft, the vane pump becomes a hydrostatic transmission. The focus of this activity is the optimization of the vane pump analyzing the internal fluid dynamics of each part during the pump operation and redesign. The study is a result of collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the University of Naples “Federico II” research groups. The universities involved in this project worked in close cooperation on these simulations. A prototype pump will be tested on a hydraulic test bench at the University of Minnesota, and the experimental data will be used to validate the simulation model.

Micro Surface Shaping for the High-Pressure Operation of Piston Machines With Water as a Working Fluid

Oil is the main working fluid used in the hydraulics industry today — but water is nonflammable, environmentally friendly and cheap: it is the better choice of working fluid for hydraulic systems. However, there is one caveat. Water’s extremely low viscosity undermines its ability to carry load. In forest machinery, construction machinery, and aircraft systems, today’s hydraulic circuits have high operating pressures, with typical values between 300 and 420 bar. These high pressures create the need for high load-carrying abilities in the fluid films of the tribological interfaces of pumps and motors. The most challenging of these interfaces is the piston-cylinder interface of swashplate type piston machines, because the fluid must balance the entire piston side load created in this design. The low viscosity of the water turns preventing metal-to-metal contact into quite a challenge. Fortunately, an understanding of how pressure builds and shifts about in these piston-cylinder lubrication interfaces, coupled with some clever micro surface shaping, can allow engineers to drastically increase the load-carrying ability of water. As part of this research, numerous different micro surface shaping design ideas have been simulated using a highly advanced non-isothermal multi-physics model developed at the Maha Fluid Power Research Center. The model calculates leakage, power losses, film thickness and pressure buildup in the piston-cylinder interface over the course of one shaft revolution. The results allow for the comparison of different surface shapes, such as axial sine waves along the piston, or a barrel-shaped piston profile. This paper elucidates the effect of those surface profiles on pressure buildup, leakage, and torque loss in the piston-cylinder interface of an axial piston pump running at high pressure with water as the lubricant.

The Design of a Powered Ankle Prosthesis With Electrohydrostatic Actuation

This paper presents the design and modelling of a new powered ankle prosthesis which combines electrohydrostatic actuation with a controllable passive damper. The new powered ankle prosthesis can switch quickly between passive mode and powered assistance mode, and is intended to just give assistance at certain points within the gait cycles, such as during toe push-off. The design concept and a prototype built to demonstrate the concept are presented. A simulation model was developed to help analyse the performance characteristics. The structure and parameterisation of the simulation model are described. A comparison between simulation results and experiment results is undertaken in order to validate the model and assist in the optimisation of the design. Some results from an initial trial with amputees are included in the paper. According to subjective feedback from the amputees, the new powered ankle prosthesis provides sufficient force at push-off to assist with walking. Future investigations will be focusing on the compactness, weight reduction and control of the powered ankle prosthesis.

Control of Fuel Injection Rate for Marine Diesel Engines Using a Direct Drive Volume Control System

A direct drive volume control (DDVC) is applied to fuel injection control for marine diesel engine. The DDVC consists of an AC servomotor, a fixed-displacement hydraulic pump, and a hydraulic cylinder. The hydraulic cylinder pushes a plunger pump and fuel is pressurized. When the fuel pressure becomes greater than injection pressure, fuel is injected to a combustion chamber. A brief introduction of the DDVC is described first in this paper referring to conventional fuel injection systems including a cam mechanism and a common rail system. A mathematical model of the DDVC for simulation is summarized. Experiments of fuel injection shows the control function of the DDVC fuel injection system. The topic of this paper is feedback control of the quantity of fuel injection (fuel mass per injection) of the DDVC. The feedback control system is simulated using the above mathematical model. Fuel injection is stopped by switching a drive signal of the AC servomotor and retracting a piston of the hydraulic cylinder. The timing to stop injection is adjusted based on crank angle. An algorithm of updating the crank angle to stop injection is proposed so that the quantity of fuel injection follows the target value. Simulation study shows that the update algorithm works successfully.

The Impact of Micro-Surface Shaping on the Piston/Cylinder Interface of Swash Plate Type Machines

With the wide use of axial piston machines of the swashplate type in industry, it is essential to maximize the overall efficiency of the machines. Focusing on the piston-cylinder interface, as it performs as a hydrodynamic bearing simultaneously fulfilling a sealing function, the overall machine can be improved by reducing the power losses due to viscous friction and leakage flow of this interface. This paper presents a research study in regards to altering the geometry of the piston through micro-surface shaping influencing the generation of the fluid film between the piston and the cylinder. This investigation utilizes a novel fully coupled fluid structure interaction model considering both thermal and elastic deformations of the solid bodies to predict the phenomena occurring within the fluid gap. Encompassed in this simulation study is a diversity of piston micro-surface shapes and a wide range of machine operating conditions. The designs presented include an axial sine wave, a flat, cylindrical design with tapered ends, a barreled shape, a combination of the axial sine wave and barrel, along with a circumferential sine wave. High pressure operating conditions in pumping mode as well as common operating conditions in both pumping and motoring mode are considered for the various designs. The results demonstrate up to a 30% reduction in energy dissipation from a standard piston-cylinder interface at higher pressure operating conditions (over 15% reduction considering all three interfaces of the machine) with the addition of a barrel surface shape while a 25% reduction (over 5% overall) is achievable at lower operating pressures in pumping mode with a waved barrel surface profile. As for motoring mode a 30% reduction (around 10% overall) is possible with the introduction of a waved barrel surface profile on the piston. It will also be shown, that not only are these reductions possible though microsurface shaping of the piston, but the reliability of the machine is also improved by reducing run-in wear all while maintaining a cost-effective, manufacturable design.

The Flow Dynamics of an Air-Driven Hydraulic Pump

Air-driven hydraulic pumps are widely used to pump high-pressure oil for small hydraulic systems, where it is uneconomic to set up a conventional hydraulic power pack. To obtain good performance of a small hydraulic system, input air flow and output oil flow characteristics of the air-driven hydraulic pump should be properly understood. In this paper, based on a mathematical model which has been experimentally verified, the model of an air-driven hydraulic pump is proposed. Using the software MATLAB/Simulink for simulation, the dynamic characteristics of the pumps are obtained. To set a foundation for the optimization of the pump, the influence of key parameters on the output characteristics of the pump was studied. Through analysis, it can be obtained that, firstly, with an increase in the input air pressure, output oil pressure and area ratio, the ratio of output to input volume flow rate decrease approximately linearly. Moreover, when the output oil pressure was fixed, an energy-saving method to enhance the output oil flow is to enlarge the area ratio of the pump. Furthermore, the output oil flow can be increased rapidly through increasing the input air pressure, but that may result in an increase in compressed air consumption. This research is of use in the performance and design optimization of air-driven hydraulic pumps.