Switching Frequency Improvement of a High Speed on/off Valve Based on Pre-excitation Control Algorithm

The high-speed on/off valve(HSV)serves as the fundamental component responsible for generating discrete fluids within digital hydraulic systems.As the switching frequency of the HSV increases,the properties of the generated discrete fluid approach those of continuous fluids.Therefore,a higher frequency response characteristic of HSV is the key to ensure the control accuracy of digital hydraulic systems.However,the current research mainly focuses on its dynamic performance,but neglect its FRC.This paper presents a theoretical analysis demonstrating that the FRC of the HSV can be enhanced by minimizing its switching time.The maximum switching frequency(MSF)is mainly determined by opening dynamic performance when HSV operates with low switching duty ratio(SDR),whereas the closing dynamic performance limits the MSF when HSV operates with high SDR.Building upon these findings,the pre-excitation control algorithm(PECA)is proposed to reduce the switching time of the HSV,and consequently enhance its FRC.Experimental results demonstrate that PECA shortens the opening delay time of HSV by 1.12 ms,the closing delay time by 2.54 ms,and the closing moving time by 0.47 ms in comparison to the existing advanced control algorithms.As a result,a larger MSF of 417 Hz and a wider controllable SDR range from 20%to 70%were achieved at a switching frequency of 250 Hz.Thus,the proposed PFCA in this paper has been verified as an effective and promising approach for enhancing the control performance of digital hydraulic systems.

A Study on the Static Characteristics of Typical Composite High Speed On-Off Valves

Natural properties of high speed on-off valves can be described through their on-off behavior and spool movement (static and oscillating) characteristics. High speed on-off valves can be combined with actuators in systems into four typical types of composite valves whose static characteristics are related not only to the structures of the single valves and the composite ones, but also to the PWM control modes. It is proved that the composite valves have similar features as those of servo valves. The nonlinear specific properties of single valves composited can be completely compensated by the suitable PWM control modes.

Dynamic Performance of High Speed Solenoid Valve with Parallel Coils

The methods of improving the dynamic performance of high speed on/off solenoid valve include increasing the magnetic force of armature and the slew rate of coil current, decreasing the mass and stroke of moving parts. The increase of magnetic force usually leads to the decrease of current slew rate, which could increase the delay time of the dynamic response of solenoid valve. Using a high voltage to drive coil can solve this contradiction, but a high driving voltage can also lead to more cost and a decrease of safety and reliability. In this paper, a new scheme of parallel coils is investigated, in which the single coil of solenoid is replaced by parallel coils with same ampere turns. Based on the mathematic model of high speed solenoid valve, the theoretical formula for the delay time of solenoid valve is deduced. Both the theoretical analysis and the dynamic simulation show that the effect of dividing a single coil into N parallel sub-coils is close to that of driving the single coil with N times of the original driving voltage as far as the delay time of solenoid valve is concerned. A specific test bench is designed to measure the dynamic performance of high speed on/off solenoid valve. The experimental results also prove that both the delay time and switching time of the solenoid valves can be decreased greatly by adopting the parallel coil scheme. This research presents a simple and practical method to improve the dynamic performance of high speed on/off solenoid valve.

Structure optimization and flow field simulation of plate type high speed on-off valve

There is a relatively complex flow state inside the high speed on-off valve,which often produces low pressure area and oil reflux in the high-speed opening and closing process of the spool,causing cavitation and vortex and other phenomena.These phenomena will affect the stability of the internal flow field of the plate valve and the flow characteristics of the high speed on-off valve.Aiming at the problems of small flow rate and instability of internal flow field,a new spool structure was designed.The flow field models of two-hole and three-hole plate spools with different openings were established,and software ANSYS Workbench was chosen to mesh the model.The standard k−εturbulence model was selected for numerical simulation using FLUENT software.The pressure distribution and velocity distribution under the same pressure and different opening degree were obtained.The structure and parameters of the optimization model were also obtained.The stability analysis of flow field under different pressure was carried out.The results demonstrate that the three-hole spool has a similar flow field change with the two-hole spool,but it does not create a low pressure zone,and the three-hole spool can work stably at 2 MPa or less.This method improves the appearance of low pressure area and oil backflow in the process of high speed opening and closing of spool.The stability of flow field and the flow rate of high speed switch valve are improved.Finally,the products designed in this paper are compared with existing hydraulic valve products.The results show that the three-hole plate type high speed on-off valve designed in this paper maintains the stability of the internal flow field under the condition of 200 Hz and large opening degree,and realizes the increase of flow rate.

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.

Development of a Novel Parallel-spool Pilot Operated High-pressure Solenoid Valve with High Flow Rate and High Speed

High-pressure solenoid valve with high flow rate and high speed is a key component in an underwater driving system.However,traditional single spool pilot operated valve cannot meet the demands of both high flow rate and high speed simultaneously.A new structure for a high pressure solenoid valve is needed to meet the demand of the underwater driving system.A novel parallel-spool pilot operated high-pressure solenoid valve is proposed to overcome the drawback of the current single spool design.Mathematical models of the opening process and flow rate of the valve are established.Opening response time of the valve is subdivided into 4 parts to analyze the properties of the opening response.Corresponding formulas to solve 4 parts of the response time are derived.Key factors that influence the opening response time are analyzed.According to the mathematical model of the valve,a simulation of the opening process is carried out by MATLAB.Parameters are chosen based on theoretical analysis to design the test prototype of the new type of valve.Opening response time of the designed valve is tested by verifying response of the current in the coil and displacement of the main valve spool.The experimental results are in agreement with the simulated results,therefore the validity of the theoretical analysis is verified.Experimental opening response time of the valve is 48.3 ms at working pressure of 10 MPa.The flow capacity test shows that the largest effective area is 126 mm2 and the largest air flow rate is 2320 L/s.According to the result of the load driving test,the valve can meet the demands of the driving system.The proposed valve with parallel spools provides a new method for the design of a high-pressure valve with fast response and large flow rate.

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.

Fault Diagnosis of Overflow Valve Based on Trispectrum

The high-order spectrum can effectively remove Gaussian noise. The three-spectrum and its slices represent random signals from a higher probability structure. It can not only qualitatively describe the linearity and nonlinearity of vibration signals closely related to mechanical failures, Gaussian and non-Gaussian Performance, and can greatly improve the accuracy of mechanical fault diagnosis. The two-dimensional slices of trispectrum in normal and fault states show different peak characteristics. 2-D wavelet multi-level decomposition can effectively compress 2-D array information. Least squares support vector machine can obtain the global optimum under limited samples, thus avoiding the local optimum problem, and has the advantage of reducing computational complexity. In this paper, 2-D wavelet multi-level decomposition is used to extract features of trispectrum 2-D slices, and input LSSVM to diagnose the fault of the pressure reducing valve, which has achieved good results.

Multi-objective optimization of a high speed on/off valve for dynamic performance improvement and volume minimization

Hydraulic circuits with high speed on/off valve(HSV)for servo control have become commonplace in aerospace.However,the individual valve that is not volume-optimized results in a large total size of hydraulic control system,diminishing the practicality.To address this issue,the high-precision equivalent reluctance model of the HSV is established by employing an equivalent magnetic circuit,on which the dynamic characteristic of the HSV,as well as the effects of structural parameters on switching behaviour,are investigated.Based on this model,multi-objective optimization is adopted to design an HSV with faster dynamic performance and smaller volume,NSGA-II genetic algorithm is applied to obtain the Pareto front of the desired objectives.To assess the impact before and after optimization,an HSV based on the optimized structure is manufactured and tested.The experimental results show that the optimized HSV reduces 47.1%of its solenoid volume while improving opening and closing dynamic performance by 14.8%and 43.0%respectively,increasing maximum switching frequency by 6.2%,and expanding flow linear control area by 6.7%.These results validate the optimized structure and indicate that the optimization method provided in the paper is beneficial for developing superior HSV.

Dynamic performance and temperature rising characteristic of a high-speed on/off valve based on pre-excitation control algorithm

High speed on/off valve(HSV)is an essential component in aerospace digital hydraulic systems(ADHS).Dynamic performance and temperature rising characteristic are two important features,which determine the performance of HSV,and affect the response speed and reliability of ADHS.Increasing the driving voltage is an effective method for improving the dynamic performance of HSV.However,continuous high voltage excitation will lead to more wasted energy,higher temperature rising and lower reliability.To solve this problem,a pre-excitation control algorithm(PECA)is proposed in this paper based on the theoretical model of the influence of electrical parameters on dynamic performance and temperature rising characteristics.In PECA,an appropriate initial coil current is generated by pre-excitation instead of increasing driving voltage,which significantly shortens the switching delay time.Then,based on real-time current online calculation and feedback mechanism,the adaptive switching of five equivalent voltages is realized.Consequently,the coil current can be rapidly kept at the expected state without consuming more energy and generating more heat.Results indicate that compared with conventional PWM control algorithm,the PECA can improve dynamic performance of HSV,shorten the total switching time by 71.5%,and increase the maximum operation frequency.Therefore,the linear area of flow characteristic is expended by 80.0%,the adjusting time of HSV-controlled system is reduced by 23%,while shortening steady error by 46.7%.Moreover,the temperature rising characteristics of HSV are better,the maximum operation temperature is reduced by 68.6%,and the time to reach the steady state temperature is shortened by 20%.From the results,it can be concluded that the PECA is not only an effective and practical control algorithm for improving the performance of HSVs and HSV-controlled systems while reducing the heat generation and decreasing the temperature rising of HSV,but also can be a potential solution in ADHS.

Automobile active suspension system with fuzzy control

A quarter-automobile active suspension model was proposed. High speed on/off solenoid valves were used as control valves and fuzzy control was chosen as control method . Based on force analyses of system parts, a mathematical model of the active suspension system was established and simplified by linearization method. Simulation study was conducted with Matlab and three scale coefficients of fuzzy controller (ke, kec, ku) were acquired. And an experimental device was designed and produced. The results indicate that the active suspension system can achieve better vibration isolation performance than passive suspension system, the displacement amplitude of automobile body can be reduced to 55%. Fuzzy control is an effective control method for active suspension system.

Research on the soft start-up performance of hydro-viscous drive

The principle and structure of hydro-viscous drive(HVD) set is introduced. Through theoretical analysis of the HVD set start-up steadiness, the conclusions were obtained that the non-linearity of the pressure performance curve and dynamic pressure instability of the pilot-operated electro-hydraulic pressure relief valve, which is used for the HVD speed regulating purpose and usually works within micro flow-rate and low oil pressure state, are the main causes of the poor start-up steadiness. So a special speed regulating valve for HVD set is developed, with which the start-up steadiness of HVD set is much improved.