Numerical investigation of cavitating flow behind the cone of a poppet valve in water hydraulic system

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of cavitating flow through water hydraulic poppet valves were performed using advanced RNG k-epsilon turbulence model. The flow was turbulent, incompressible and unsteady, for Reynolds numbers greater than 43 000. The working fluid was water, and the structure of the valve was simplified as a two dimensional axisymmetric geometrical model. Flow field visualization was numerically achieved. The effects of inlet velocity, outlet pressure, opening size as well as poppet angle on cavitation intensity in the poppet valve were numerically investigated. Experimental flow visualization was conducted to capture cavitation images near the orifice in the poppet valve with 30° poppet angle using high speed video camera. The binary cavitating flow field distribution obtained from digital processing of the original cavitation image showed a good agreement with the numerical result.

Research and Development of Electro‑hydraulic Control Valves Oriented to Industry 4.0:A Review

Electro-hydraulic control valves are key hydraulic components for industrial applications and aerospace,which controls electro-hydraulic motion.With the development of automation,digital technology,and communication technology,electro-hydraulic control valves are becoming more digital,integrated,and intelligent in order to meet the requirements of Industry 4.0.This paper reviews the state of the art development for electro-hydraulic control valves and their related technologies.This review paper considers three aspects of state acquisition through sensors or indirect acquisition technologies,control strategies along with digital controllers and novel valves,and online maintenance through data interaction and fault diagnosis.The main features and development trends of electro-hydraulic control valves oriented to Industry 4.0 are discussed.

EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS OF CAVITATION EFFECTS ON FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF SMALL ORIFICES AND VALVES IN WATER HYDRAULICS

The flow characteristics and cavitation effects of water passing throughsmall sharp-edged cylindrical orifices and valves of different shapes in water hydraulics areinvestigated. The test results using orifices with different aspect ratios and different diametersshow that the flow coefficients in the case of non-cavitating flow are larger than that of flow inthe case of cavitation occurrence. The flow coefficients of flow with cavitation initially decreaseas Reynolds number increases and ultimately tend to be of constant values close to contractioncoefficient. Large aspect ratio has an effect of suppressing cavitation. The experimental resultsabout disc valves illustrate that the valves with sharp edge at large opening are less affected bycavitation than that at small opening. Throttle with triangle notch has better anti-cavitationability than that with square notch. The flowrate of the throttle with square notch is significantlyaffected by the flow direction or the flow passage shape.

Water-Assisted Injection Molding System Based on Water Hydraulic Proportional Control Technique

Water-assisted injection molding（WAIM）, an innovative process to mold plastic parts with hollow sections, is characterized with intermittent, periodic process and large pressure and flow rate variation. Energy savings and injection pressure control can not be .attained based on conventional valve control system. Moreover, the injection water can not be supplied directly by water hydraulic proportional control system. Poor efficiency and control performance are presented by current trial systems, which pressurize injection water by compressed air. In this paper, a novel water hydraulic system is developed applying an accumulator for energy saving. And a new differential pressure control method is proposed by using pressure cylinder and water hydraulic proportional pressure relief valve for back pressure control. Aiming at design of linear controller for injection water pressure regulation, a linear load model is approximately built through computational fluid dynamics（CFD） simulation on two-phase flow cavity filling process with variable temperature and viscosity, and a linear model of pressure control system is built with the load model and linearization of water hydraulic components. According to the simulation, model based feedback is brought forward to compensate the pressure decrease during accumulator discharge and eliminate the derivative element of the system. Meanwhile, the steady-state error can be reduced and the capacity of resisting disturbance can be enhanced, by closed-loop control of load pressure with integral compensation. Through the developed experimental system in the State Key Lab of Fluid Power Transmission and Control, Zhejiang University, China, the static characteristic of the water hydraulic proportional relief valve was tested and output pressure control of the system in Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene（ABS） parts molding experiments was also studied. The experiment results show that the dead band and hysteresis of the water hydraulic proportional pressure relief valve are large, but the control precision and linearity can be improved with feed-forward compensation. With the experimental results of injection water pressure control, the applicability of this WAIM system and the effect of its linear controller are verified. The novel proposed process of WAIM pressure control and study on characteristics of control system contribute to the application of water hydraulic proportional control and WAIM technology.

Application of Simple Adaptive Control to Water Hydraulic Servo Cylinder System

Although conventional model reference adaptive control （MRAC） achieves good tracking performance for cylinder control, the controller structure is much more complicated and has less robustness to disturbance in real applications. This paper discusses the use of simple adaptive control （SAC） for positioning a water hydraulic servo cylinder system. Compared with MRAC, SAC has a simpler and lower order structure, i.e., higher feasibility. The control performance of SAC is examined and evaluated on a water hydraulic servo cylinder system. With the recent increased concerns over global environmental problems, the water hydraulic technique using pure tap water as a pressure medium has become a new drive source comparable to electric, oil hydraulic, and pneumatic drive systems. This technique is also preferred because of its high power density, high safety against fire hazards in production plants, and easy availability. However, the main problems for precise control in a water hydraulic system are steady state errors and overshoot due to its large friction torque and considerable leakage flow. MRAC has been already applied to compensate for these effects, and better control performances have been obtained. However, there have been no reports on the application of SAC for water hydraulics. To make clear the merits of SAC, the tracking control performance and robustness are discussed based on experimental results. SAC is confirmed to give better tracking performance compared with PI control, and a control precision comparable to MRAC （within 10 μm of the reference position） and higher robustness to parameter change, despite the simple controller. The research results ensure a wider application of simple adaptive control in real mechanical systems.

Simulation investigation on fluid characteristics of jet pipe water hydraulic servo valve based on CFD

Simulation investigation on fluid characteristics of the water hydraulic jet pipe servo valve （WHJPSV） is conducted through a commercial computational fluid dynamics （CFD） software package FLUENT. In particular, the factors to fluid characteristics of WHJPSV are addressed, which include diameter combination of jet pipe and receiver pipe, jet pipe nozzle clearance, angle between two jet receiver pipes and deflection angle of the jet pipe. It is concluded from the results that： （i） Structural parameters have great influences on fluid characteristics of WHJPSV, when d1 = d2 = 0.3 mm, α= 45 , b = 0.5 mm, and the simulation exhibits better fluid characteristics; （ii） The magnitude of the recovery pressure and flow velocity increase almost linearly with the deflection angle of jet pipe. The research work in this paper is important for determining and optimizing the structural parameters of the jet pipe and jet receiver. The relevant conclusions could be extended to the study of other water hydraulic servo control components.

Investigation into the Independent Metering Control Performance of a Twin Spools Valve with Switching Technology-controlled Pilot Stage

In hydraulic area,independent metering control(IMC)technology is an effective approach to improve system efficiency and control flexibility.In addition,digital hydraulic technology(DHT)has been verified as a reasonable method to optimize system dynamic performance.Integrating these two technologies into one component can combine their advantages together.However,few works focused on it.In this paper,a twin spools valve with switching technologycontrolled pilot stage(TSVSP)is presented,which applied DHT into its pilot stage while appending IMC into its main stage.Based on this prototype valve,a series of numerical and experiment analysis of its IMC performance with both simulated load and excavator boom cylinder are carried out.Results showed fast and robust performance of pressure and flow compound control with acceptable fluctuation phenomenon caused by switching technology.Rising time of flow response in excavator cylinder can be controlled within 200 ms,meanwhile,the recovery time of rod chamber pressure under suddenly changed condition is optimized within 250 ms.IMC system based on TSVSP can improve both dynamic performance and robust characteristics of the target actuator so it is practical in valve-cylinder system and can be applied in mobile machineries.

Investigation of Valve Plate in Water Hydraulic Axial Piston Motor

This paper has introduced the developments of water hydraulic axial piston equipments. According to the effects of physicochemical properties of water on water hydraulic components, a novel valve plate for water hydraulic axial motor has been put forward, whose moment exerted by the fluid field between valve plate and bearing plate is balanced entirely. The material screening experiment of valve plate is done on the test rig. Through numerical simulation the effects of some geometry parameters on the performance of water hydraulic motor have been studied. The silencing grooves on the valve plate in water hydraulic motor can reduce the pressure shock and the occurrence of cavitation effectively. It is evident that the appropriate structure should change the wear status between matching pairs and reduces the wear and specific pressure of the matching pairs. The specimen with the new type valve plate is used in a tool system.

Dynamic Simulation and Valve Structure Optimization of an Electro-Hydraulic Clutch Shift Control System in an Automatic Transmission

The electro-hydraulic clutch control system controls the transferred torque of gear-shifting clutches in clutch-to-clutch transmissions. A nonlinear dynamic model of an electro-hydraulic clutch shift control system is presented. The mechanical and fluid subsystems of all valves are investigated, including their interactions. Model validation of the electro-hydraulic valve system is performed by comparing the simulated and measured pressure curves. The dynamic characteristics of the electro-hydraulic clutch shift control system with different supply pressures and different fluid temperatures are simulated and evaluated. It is found that pipes which are often ignored between the electro-hydraulic valve system and the clutch piston,have strong influence on clutch piston chamber pressures. In order to satisfy the required time and reduce the fluctuation of the clutch piston chamber pressures,the orifices' diameters and valve structure are optimized.

Dynamic Modelling and Design of a Servomechanism for Hydraulic Directional-Control Valves

This paper analyses a control strategy applicable in heaVy-duty hydraulic Systems,namely, the introduction of a servovalve to achieve smoother operation of direCtional-control valves that serve also as flow-control valves over two fanges of operating conditions. A mathematical model of the dynamics of the System is etallished and design criteria are obtained from a linearised form of that model. The influence of variations in tile axial force on the spool of the main valve is investigated, and the use of the resultS in the design of systems of the proposed kind is discussed.

High Speed On/Off Valve Control Hydraulic Propeller

The work-class remotely-operated-underwater-vehicles（ROVs） are mainly driven by hydraulic propulsion system,and the effeciency of hydraulic propulsion system is an important performance index of ROVs.However,the efficiency of traditional hydraulic propulsion system controlled by throttle valves is too low.Therefore,in this paper,for small and medium ROVs,a novel propulsion system with higher efficiency based on high speed on/off valve control hydraulic propeller is proposed.To solve the conflict between large flow rate and high frequency response performance,a two-stage high speed on/off valve-motor unit with large flow rate and high response speed simultaneously is developed.Through theoretical analysis,an effective fluctuation control method and a novel pulse-width-pulse-frequency-modulation（PWPFM） are introduced to solve the conflict among inherently fluctuation,valve dynamic performance and system efficiency.A simulation model is established to evaluate the system performance.To prove the advantage of system in energy saving,and test the dynamic control performance of high speed on/off valve control propeller,a test setup is developed and a series of comparative experiments is completed.The smimulation and experiment results show that the two-stage high speed on/off valve has an excellent dynamic response performance,and can be used to realize high accuracy speed control.The experiment results prove that the new propulsion system has much more advantages than the traditional throttle speed regulation system in energy saving.The lowest efficiency is more than 40%.The application results on a ROV indicate that the high speed on/off valve control propeller system has good dynamic and steady-state control performances.Its transient time is only about 1 s-1.5 s,and steady-state error is less than 5%.Meanwhile,the speed fluctuation is small,and the smooth propeller speed control effect is obtained.On the premise of good propeller speed control performance,the proposed high speed on/off valve control propeller can improve the effeciency of ROV propulsion system significantly,and provides another attractive ROV propulsion system choice for engineers.

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.

Water Hydraulic 2/2 Directional Valve with Plane Piston Structure

Due to the fire resistance and environmental compatibility, using water as the working fluid in hydraulic circuits is receiving an increasing attention by both manufactures and users. This hydraulic directional valve is developed. When new water hydraulic directional valve is designed and manufactured, this paper introduces a water hydraulic 2/2 directional valve and its principle. The valve is composed of a hydraulically operated seat valve and a magnetic 3/2 direction valve. Aimed at the serious leakage and impact generating easily in reversing suddenly, an improved structure of water space seal is changed to direct seal, compaction force between main valve spool and main valve pocket was logically designed and damper in pilot valve port is matched with sensitive cavity in main valve. From the view of flow control, the methods of cavitation resistanee of the directional water hydraulic valve are investigated. The computational fluid dynamics approaches are applied to obtain static pressure distributions and cavitation images in the channel of the main stage of the valve with two kinds of structure. The results show that the method of optimized spout can effectively restrain cavitation. The work provides some useful reference for developing water hydraulic control valve with the lower noise and lower vibration. Meantime, the structural parameters are optimized on the basis of information obtained from simulation. Static test, dynamic test and life test are accomplished, and the results show that the water hydraulic directional valve possesses good property, its pressure loss is 1.1 MPa lower, switching time is shorter than 0.025 s, and its strike crest is 0.8 MPa lower. The valve possess fine dynamic performance with the characteristic rapidly action and lower implusion.

Flow and cavitation characteristics of water hydraulic poppet valves

Two types of poppet valves were tested, one is a poppet with a sharp-edged seats, and the other is that with a chamfered seat. During the tests, the effects of backpressure and poppet lift on flow characteristics were considered. Cavitation inception was detected by the appearance and rapid growth of a particular low frequency component of the outlet pressure fluctuation of valve when cavitation occurs. Experimental results show cavitation, back pressure, valve opening and its geometrical shape have significant effects on the flow characteristics of valve. The flow coefficient of throttle with water used as working medium is 0 85～0 95 when there is no cavitation. The pressure drop of flow saturation decreases with the increasing of poppet lift. The sharp-edged throttle has stronger anti-cavitation ability than the chamfered one.

RESEARCH ON THE PERFORMANCE OF NEW TYPE OF PROPORTIONAL PESSURE AND FLOW CONTROL VALVE

A new closed loop flow controlling principle through correcting the valve'sopening area while load pressure is changing is carried out. Further more a principle using only oneproportional valve to compound control pressure and flow is suggested. By using very simpleproportional throttle valve in structure, the functions that five kinds of proportional valves orany two of them combined possess can be complimented. After analyzing, comparing, and testing thedynamic and static characteristics of valve with different controlling principles and main valvestructure styles, the optimized structure styles and control methods are achieved.

Dynamic characteristics of the high-flow water three-way valve

Operating principle of water three-way valve with high flow for individual hydraulic prop in coal was presented in this paper, its strict and precise mathematical model was established, its flow field was simulated numerically by software Fluent, and its dynamic characteristics were analyzed during the work process such as raising leg, loading and overflow, the influence of the related parameters on high-flow water three-way valve was determined. The results as follows： during the raising leg stage and early raising leg stage, when the damping ratio increases, the overshoot of system decreases and the setting time reduces, and the dynamic response performance has a significant improvement. During the loading stage and the overflow stage, the pressure in plunger chamber of single hydraulic prop, the output flow and the displacement of the high-flow water three-way valve decrease with the decreasing of the external load. The spring stiffness of the safety valve directs the flow and the spool＇s displacement of the safety valve, and it can be used to control the high-flow three-way valve＇s sensitivity.

Nonlinear Mathematical Modeling and Sensitivity Analysis of Hydraulic Drive Unit

The previous sensitivity analysis researches are not accurate enough and also have the limited reference value, because those mathematical models are relatively simple and the change of the load and the initial displacement changes of the piston are ignored, even experiment verification is not conducted. Therefore, in view of deficiencies above, a nonlinear mathematical model is established in this paper, including dynamic characteristics of servo valve, nonlinear characteristics of pressure-flow, initial displacement of servo cylinder piston and friction nonlinearity. The transfer function block diagram is built for the hydraulic drive unit closed loop position control, as well as the state equations. Through deriving the time-varying coefficient items matrix and time-varying free items matrix of sensitivity equations respectively, the expression of sensitivity equations based on the nonlinear mathematical model are obtained. According to structure parameters of hydraulic drive unit, working parameters, fluid transmission characteristics and measured friction-velocity curves, the simulation analysis of hydraulic drive unit is completed on the MATLAB/Simulink simulation platform with the displacement step 2 mm, 5 mm and 10 mm, respectively. The simulation results indicate that the developed nonlinear mathematical model is sufficient by comparing the characteristic curves of experimental step response and simulation step response under different constant load. Then, the sensitivity function time-history curves of seventeen parameters are obtained, basing on each state vector time-history curve of step response characteristic. The maximum value of displacement variation percentage and the sum of displacement variation absolute values in the sampling time are both taken as sensitivity indexes. The sensitivity indexes values above are calculated and shown visually in histograms under different working conditions, and change rules are analyzed. Then the sensitivity indexes values of four measurable parameters, such as supply pressure, proportional gain, initial position of servo cylinder piston and load force, are verified experimentally on test platform of hydraulic drive unit, and the experimental research shows that the sensitivity analysis results obtained through simulation are approximate to the test results. This research indicates each parameter sensitivity characteristics of hydraulic drive unit, the performance-affected main parameters and secondary parameters are got under different working conditions, which will provide the theoretical foundation for the control compensation and structure optimization of hydraulic drive unit.

Water hammer prediction and control:the Green's function method

By Green＇s function method we show that the water hammer （WH） can be analytically predicted for both laminar and turbulent flows （for the latter, with an eddy vis- cosity depending solely on the space coordinates）, and thus its hazardous effect can be rationally controlled and mini- mized. To this end, we generalize a laminar water hammer equation of Wang et al. （J. Hydrodynamics, B2, 51, 1995） to include arbitrary initial condition and variable viscosity, and obtain its solution by Green＇s function method. The pre- dicted characteristic WH behaviors by the solutions are in excellent agreement with both direct numerical simulation of the original governing equations and, by adjusting the eddy viscosity coefficient, experimentally measured turbulent flow data. Optimal WH control principle is thereby constructed and demonstrated.

Investigation of Semi-Active Hydro-Pneumatic Suspension for a Heavy Vehicle Based on Electro-Hydraulic Proportional Valve

Hydro-pneumatic suspension is widely used in heavy vehicles due to its nonlinear characteristics of stiffness and damping. However, the conventional passive hydro-pneumatic suspension can’t adjust parameters according to the complicated road environment of heavy vehicles to fulfill the requirements of the vehicle ride comfort. In this paper, a semi-active hydro-pneumatic suspension system based on the electro-hydraulic proportional valve control is proposed, and fuzzy control is used as the control strategy to adjust the?damping force of the semi-active hydro-pneumatic suspension. A 1/4?semi-active hydro-pneumatic suspension model is established, which is co-simulated with AMESim and MATLAB/Simulink. The co-simulation results show that the semi-active hydro-pneumatic suspension system can significantly reduce vibration of the vehicle body, and improve the suspension performance comparing with passive hydro-pneumatic suspension.