Energy-saving design of variable-displacement bi-directional pump-controlled electrohydraulic system

Losses in control valves drag down the average overall efficiency of electrohydraulic systems to only about 22% from nearly 75% for standard pump-motor sets. For achieving higher energy efficiency in slower systems, direct pump control replacing fast-response valve control is being put in place through variable-speed motors. Despite the promise of a quicker response, displacement control of pumps has seen slower progress for exhibiting undesired oscillation with respect to the demand in some situations. Hence, a mechatronic simulation-based design is taken up here for a variable-displacement pump–controlled system directly feeding a double-acting single-rod cylinder. The most significant innovation centers on designing an axial-piston pump with an electrohydraulic compensator for bi-directional swashing. An accumulator is conceived to handle the flow difference in the two sides across the load piston. A solenoid-driven sequence valve with P control is proposed for charging the accumulator along with setting its initial gas pressure by a feedforward design. Simple proportional–integral–derivative control of the compensator valve is considered in this exploratory study. Appropriate setting of the gains and critical sizing of the compensator has been obtained through a detailed parametric study aiming low integral absolute error. A notable finding of the simulation is the achievement of the concurrent minimum integral absolute error of 3.8 mm s and the maximum energy saving of 516 kJ with respect to a fixed-displacement pump. This is predicted for the combination of the circumferential port width of 2 mm for the compensator valve and the radial clearance of 40 µm between each compensator cylinder and the paired piston.