Integrated slipper retainer mechanism to eliminate slipper wear in high-speed axial piston pumps

he power density of axial piston pumps can greatly benefit from increasing the speed level.However,traditional slippers in axial piston pumps are exposed to continuous sliding on the swash plate,suffering from serious wear at high rotational speeds.Therefore,this paper presents a new integrated slipper retainer mechanism for high-speed axial piston pumps,which can avoid direct contact between the slippers and the swash plate and thereby eliminate slipper wear under severe operating conditions.A lubrication model was developed for this specific slipper retainer mechanism,and experiments were carried out on a pump prototype operating at high rotational speed up to 10000 r/min.Experimental results qualitatively validated the theoretical model and confirmed the effectiveness of the new slipper design.

Development of an analytical model to estimate the churning losses in high-speed axial piston pumps

The axial piston pumps in aerospace applications are often characterized by high-speed rotation to achieve great power density. However, their internal rotating parts are fully immersed in the casing oil during operation, leading to considerable churning losses (more than 10% of total power losses) at high rotational speeds. The churning losses deserve much attention at the design stage of high-speed axial piston pumps, but accurate analytical models are not available to estimate the drag torque associated with the churning losses. In this paper, we derive the analytical expressions of the drag torque acting on the key rotating parts immersed in oil, including the cylinder block and the multiple pistons in a circular array. The calculated drag torque agrees well with the experimental data over a wide range of rotational speeds from 1500 to 12000 r/min. The presented analytical model provides practical guidelines for reducing the churning losses in high-speed axial piston pumps or motors.

Cavitation recognition of axial piston pumps in noisy environment based on Grad-CAM visualization technique

The cavitation in axial piston pumps threatens the reliability and safety of the overall hydraulic system.Vibration signal can reflect the cavitation conditions in axial piston pumps and it has been combined with machine learning to detect the pump cavitation.However,the vibration signal usually contains noise in real working conditions,which raises concerns about accurate recognition of cavitation in noisy environment.This paper presents an intelligent method to recognise the cavitation in axial piston pumps in noisy environment.First,we train a convolutional neural network(CNN)using the spectrogram images transformed from raw vibration data under different cavitation conditions.Second,we employ the technique of gradient-weighted class activation mapping(Grad-CAM)to visualise class-discriminative regions in the spectrogram image.Finally,we propose a novel image processing method based on Grad-CAM heatmap to automatically remove entrained noise and enhance class features in the spectrogram image.The experimental results show that the proposed method greatly improves the diagnostic performance of the CNN model in noisy environments.The classification accuracy of cavitation conditions increases from 0.50 to 0.89 and from 0.80 to 0.92 at signal-to-noise ratios of 4 and 6 dB,respectively.

Experimental Research on the Dynamic Lubricating Performance of Slipper/Swash Plate Interface in Axial Piston Pumps

The interface between the slipper/swash plate is one of the most important frication pairs in axial piston pumps.The test of this interface in a real pump is very challenging.In this paper,a novel pump prototype is designed and a test rig is set up to study the dynamic lubricating performance of the slipper/swash-plate interface in axial piston machines.Such an experimental setup can simulate the operating condition of a real axial piston pump without changing the relative motion relationship of the interfaces.Considering the lubricant oil film thickness as the main measurement parameter,the attitude of the slipper under the conditions of different load pressure,rotation speed and charge pressure are studied experimentally.After the test,the wear state of the swash plate is observed.According to the friction trace on the surface of the swash plate,the prediction for the attitude of the slipper and the zone easy to wear are verified.

Influence of Piston Number on Churning Losses in Axial Piston Pumps

Raising the rotational speed of an axial piston pump is useful for improving its power density;however,the churning losses of the piston increase significantly with increasing speed,and this reduces the performance and efficiency of the axial piston pump.Currently,there has been some research on the churning losses of pistons;however,it has rarely been analyzed from the perspective of the piston number.To improve the performance and efficiency of the axial piston pump,a computational fluid dynamics(CFD)simulation model of the churning loss was established,and the effect of piston number on the churning loss was studied in detail.The simulation analysis results revealed that the churning losses initially increased as the number of pistons increased;however,when the number of pistons increased from six to nine,the torque of the churning losses decreased because of the hydrodynamic shadowing effect.In addition,in the analysis of cavitation results,it was determined that the cavitation area of the axial piston pump was mainly concentrated around the piston,and the cavitation became increasingly severe as the speed increased.By comparing the simulation results with and without the cavitation model,it was observed that the cavitation phenomenon is beneficial for the reduction of churning losses.In this study,a piston churning loss test rig that can eliminate other friction losses was established to verify the accuracy of the simulation results.A comparative analysis indicated that the simulation results were consistent with the actual situation.In addition,this study also conducted a simulation study on seven and nine piston pumps with the same displacement.The simulation results revealed that churning losses of the seven pistons were generally greater than those of the nine pistons under the same displacement.In addition,regarding the same piston number and displacement,reducing the pitch circle radius of piston bores is effective in reducing the churning loss.This research analyzes the effect of piston number on the churning loss,which has certain guiding significance for the structural design and model selection of axial piston pumps.

Raising the Speed Limit of Axial Piston Pumps by Optimizing the Suction Duct

The maximum delivery pressure and the maximum rotational speed determine the power density of axial piston pumps.However,increasing the speed beyond the limit always accompanies cavitation,leading to the decrease of the volumetric efficiency.The pressure loss in the suction duct is considered a significant reason for the cavitation.Therefore,this paper proposes a methodology to optimize the shape of the suction duct aiming at reducing the intensity of cavitation and increasing the speed limit.At first,a computational fluid dynamics(CFD)model based on the full cavitation model(FCM)is developed to simulate the fluid field of the axial piston pump and a test rig is set to validate the model.Then the topology optimization is conducted for obtaining the minimum pressure loss in the suc-tion duct.Comparing the original suction duct with the optimized one in the simulation model,the pressure loss in the suction duct gets considerable reduction,which eases the cavitation intensity a lot.The simulation results prove that the speed limit can increase under several different inlet pressures.

Investigation on the Radial Micro-motion about Piston of Axial Piston Pump

The limit working parameters and service life of axial piston pump are determined by the carrying ability and lubrication characteristic of its key friction pairs. Therefore, the design and optimization of the key friction pairs are always a key and difficult problem in the research on axial piston pump. In the traditional research on piston/cylinder pair, the assembly relationship of piston and cylinder bore is simplified into ideal cylindrical pair, which can not be used to analyze the influences of radial micro-motion of piston on the distribution characteristics of oil-film thickness and pressure in details. In this paper, based on the lubrication theory of the oil film, a numerical simulation model is built, taking the influences of roughness, elastic deformation of piston and pressure-viscosity effect into consideration. With the simulation model, the dynamic characteristics of the radial micro-motion and pressure distribution are analyzed, and the relationships between radial micro-motion and carrying ability, lubrication condition, and abrasion are discussed. Furthermore, a model pump for pressure distribution measurement of oil film between piston and cylinder bore is designed. The comparison of simulation and experimental results of pressure distribution shows that the simulation model has high accuracy. The experiment and simulation results demonstrate that the pressure distribution has peak values that are much higher than the boundary pressure in the piston chamber due to the radial micro-motion, and the abrasion of piston takes place mainly on the hand close to piston ball. In addition, improvement of manufacturing roundness and straightness of piston and cylinder bore is helpful to improve the carrying ability of piston/cylinder pair. The proposed research provides references for designing piston/cylinder pair, and helps to prolong the service life of axial piston pump.

Modeling and Simulation on Axial Piston Pump Based on Virtual Prototype Technology

A particular emphasis is placed on the virtual prototype technology （VPT） of axial piston pump. With this technology it is convenient and flexible to build a complicated 3D virtual based on real physical model. The actual kinematics pairs of the parts were added on the model. The fluid characters were calculated by hydraulic software. The shape of the parts, the flexible body of parts, etc were improved in this prototype. So the virtual prototype of piston pump can work in computer like a real piston pump, and the flow ripple, pressure pulsation, motion principle, stress of parts, etc can be investigated. The development of the VPT is introduced at the beginning, and the modeling process of the virtual prototype is explained. Then a special emphasis is laid on the relationship between the dynamics model and the hydraulic model, and the simulations on the flow ripple, pressure pulsation, motion principle, the stress and strain distribution of the middle shaft and piston are operated. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the VPT are discussed. The improved virtual prototype of piston pump more tally with the real situation and the VPT has a great potential in simulation on hydraulic components.

Flow Ripple of Axial Piston Pump with Computational Fluid Dynamic Simulation Using Compressible Hydraulic Oil

The flow ripple, which is the source of noise in an axial piston pump, is widely studied today with the computational fluid dynamic（CFD） technology development. In the traditional CFD modeling, the fluid compressibility, which strongly influences the accuracy of the flow ripple simulation results, is often neglected. So a compressible sub-model was added with user defined function（UDF） in the CFD model to predict the flow ripple. At the same time, a test rig of flow ripple was built to study the validity of simulation. The flow ripple of pump was tested with different working parameters, including the rotation speed and the working pressure. The comparisons with experimental results show that the validity of the CFD model with compressible hydraulic oil is acceptable in analyzing the flow tipple characteristics. In this paper, the improved CFD model increases the accuracy of flow ripple rate to about one-magnitude order. Therefore, the compressible model of hydraulic oil is necessary in the flow ripple investigation of CFD simulation. The compressibility of hydraulic oil has significant effect on flow ripple, and the compression ripple takes about 88% of the total flow ripple of pump. Leakage ripple has the lowest proportion of about 4%, and geometrical ripple leakage ripple takes the remnant 8%. Besides, the influence of working parameters was investigated through the CFD simulations and experimental measurements. Comparison results show that the amplitude of flow ripple grows with the increasing of rotation speed and working pressure, and the flow ripple rate is independent of the rotation speed. However, flow ripple rate of piston pump grows with the increasing of working pressure, because the leakage ripple will increase with the pressure growing. The investigation on flow ripple of an axial piston pump using compressible hydraulic oil provides a more validity simulation model for the CFD analyzing and is beneficial to further understanding of the flow ripple characteristics in an axial piston pump.

Impact of Typical Steady-state Conditions and Transient Conditions on Flow Ripple and Its Test Accuracy for Axial Piston Pump

The current research about the flow ripple of axial piston pump mainly focuses on the effect of the structure of parts on the flow ripple. Therein, the structure of parts are usually designed and optimized at rated working conditions. However, the pump usually has to work in large-scale and time-variant working conditions. Therefore, the flow ripple characteristics of pump and analysis for its test accuracy with respect to variant steady-state conditions and transient conditions in a wide range of operating parameters are focused in this paper. First, a simulation model has been constructed, which takes the kinematics of oil film within friction pairs into account for higher accuracy. Afterwards, a test bed which adopts Secondary Source Method is built to verify the model. The simulation and tests results show that the angular position of the piston, corresponding to the position where the peak flow ripple is produced, varies with the different pressure. The pulsating amplitude and pulsation rate of flow ripple increase with the rise of pressure and the variation rate of pressure. For the pump working at a constant speed, the flow pulsation rate decreases dramatically with the increasing speed when the speed is less than 27.78% of the maximum speed, subsequently presents a small decrease tendency with the speed further increasing. With the rise of the variation rate of speed, the pulsating amplitude and pulsation rate of flow ripple increase. As the swash plate angle augments, the pulsating amplitude of flow ripple increases, nevertheless the flow pulsation rate decreases. In contrast with the effect of the variation of pressure, the test accuracy of flow ripple is more sensitive to the variation of speed. It makes the test accuracy above 96.20% available for the pulsating amplitude of pressure deviating within a range of ~6% from the mean pressure. However, with a variation of speed deviating within a range of ±2% from the mean speed, the attainable test accuracy of flow ripple is above 93.07%. The model constructed in this research proposes a method to determine the flow ripple characteristics of pump and its attainable test accuracy under the large-scale and time-variant working conditions. Meanwhile, a discussion about the variation of flow ripple and its obtainable test accuracy with the conditions of the pump working in wide operating ranges is given as well.

Output Characteristics of a Series Three-port Axial Piston Pump

Driving a hydraulic cylinder directly by a closed-loop hydraulic pump is currently a key research area in the field of electro-hydraulic control technology,and it is the most direct means to improve the energy efficiency of an electro-hydraulic control system.So far,this technology has been well applied to the pump-controlled symmetric hydraulic cylinder.However,for the differential cylinder that is widely used in hydraulic technology,satisfactory results have not yet been achieved,due to the asymmetric flow constraint.Therefore,based on the principle of the asymmetric valve controlled asymmetric cylinder in valve controlled cylinder technology,an innovative idea for an asymmetric pump controlled asymmetric cylinder is put forward to address this problem.The scheme proposes to transform the oil suction window of the existing axial piston pump into two series windows.When in use,one window is connected to the rod chamber of the hydraulic cylinder and the other is linked with a low-pressure oil tank.This allows the differential cylinders to be directly controlled by changing the displacement or rotation speed of the pumps.Compared with the loop principle of offsetting the area difference of the differential cylinder through hydraulic valve using existing technology,this method may simplify the circuits and increase the energy efficiency of the system.With the software SimulationX,a hydraulic pump simulation model is set up,which examines the movement characteristics of an individual piston and the compressibility of oil,as well as the flow distribution area as it changes with the rotation angle.The pump structure parameters,especially the size of the unloading groove of the valve plate,are determined through digital simulation.All of the components of the series arranged three distribution-window axial piston pump are designed,based on the simulation analysis of the flow pulse characteristics of the pump,and then the prototype pump is made.The basic characteristics,such as the pressure,flow and noise of the pumps under different rotation speeds,are measured on the test bench.The test results verify the correctness of the principle.The proposed research lays a theoretical foundation for the further development of a new pump-controlled cylinder system.

Noise Reduction of an Axial Piston Pump by Valve Plate Optimization

Current researches mainly focus on the investigations of the valve plate utilizing pressure relief grooves. However,air?release and cavitation can occur near the grooves. The valve plate utilizing damping holes show excellent perfor?mance in avoiding air?release and cavitation. This study aims to reduce the noise emitted from an axial piston pump using a novel valve plate utilizing damping holes. A dynamic pump model is developed,in which the fluid properties are carefully modeled to capture the phenomena of air release and cavitation. The causes of di erent noise sources are investigated using the model. A comprehensive parametric analysis is conducted to enhance the understanding of the e ects of the valve plate parameters on the noise sources. A multi?objective genetic algorithm optimization method is proposed to optimize the parameters of valve plate. The amplitudes of the swash plate moment and flow rates in the inlet and outlet ports are defined as the objective functions. The pressure overshoot and undershoot in the piston chamber are limited by properly constraining the highest and lowest pressure values. A comparison of the various noise sources between the original and optimized designs over a wide range of pressure levels shows that the noise sources are reduced at high pressures. The results of the sound pressure level measurements show that the optimized valve plate reduces the noise level by 1.6 d B(A) at the rated working condition. The proposed method is e ective in reducing the noise of axial piston pumps and contributes to the development of quieter axial piston machines.

Experimental Study of Churning Losses in Swash Plate Axial Piston Pump

The problem of the churning loss in swash plate axial piston machines is investigated through experimental measurement and theoretical analysis. Several works surrounding churning loss in hydraulic components have been proposed in the past, but few have conducted experimental studies and accounted for both dry and wet housing conditions. In this study,a specialized experimental setup is established, which includes a transparent test pump diligently designed for performing various functions of tests. The test pump can work as a real pump without losing any actual features of pump operation. The torque loss in both the dry housing pump and wet housing pump is measured in terms of the shaft speed and its predictive model is also developed analytically. The comparisons between measured and calculated torque loss are presented, showing how speed influences torque loss in both conditions. The advantage/disadvantages of the two cases are summarized. The significance of the test setup is highlighted by verifying the proposed model, which can advance the understanding of energy losses of high speed pumps in future.

Cavitation of a Submerged Jet at the Spherical Valve Plate/Cylinder Block Interface for Axial Piston Pump

The spherical valve plate/cylinder block pair has the advantages of strong overturning resistance and large bearing area.However,the configurations of the unloading and pre-boosting triangular grooves on the spherical valve plate are different from those in the planar valve plate,resulting in special cavitation phenomenon on the spherical port plate pair.In order to study cavitation characteristics of spherical port plate pair,a dynamic CFD model of the piston pump including turbulence model,cavitation model and fluid compressibility is established.A detailed UDF compilation scheme is provided for modelling of the micron-sized spherical oil film mesh,which makes up for the lack of research on the meshing of the spherical oil film.In this paper,using CFD simulation tools,from the perspectives of pressure field,velocity field and gas volume fraction change,a detailed analysis of the transient evolution of the submerged cavitation jet in a axial piston pump with spherical valve plate is carried out.The study indicates the movement direction of the cavitation cloud cluster through the cloud image and the velocity vector direction of the observation point.The sharp decrease of velocity and gas volume fraction indicates the collapse phenomenon of bubbles on the part wall surface.These discoveries verify the special erosion effect in case of the spherical valve plate/cylinder block pair.The submerged cavitation jet generated by the unloading triangular grooves distributed on the spherical valve plate not only cause denudation of the inner wall surface of the valve plate,but also cause strong impact and denudation on the lower surface of the cylinder body.Finally,the direction of the unloading triangular groove was modified to extend the distance between it and the wall surface which can effectively alleviate the erosion effect.

Parametric analysis of thermal effect on hydrostatic slipper bearing capacity of axial piston pump

Hydrostatic slipper was often used in friction bearing design, allowing improvement of the latter's dynamic behavior. The influence of thermal effect on hydrostatic slipper bearing capacity of axial piston pump was investigated. A set of lumped parameter mathematical models were developed based on energy conservation law of slipper/ swash plate pair. The results show that thermal equilibrium clearance due to solid thermal deformation periodically changes with shaft rotational angle. The slipper bearing capacity increases dramatically with decreasing thermal equilibrium clearance. In order to improve the slipper bearing capacity, length-to-diameter ratio of fixed damper varies from 3.5 to 8.75 and radius ratio of slipper varies from 1.5 to 2.0. In addition, the higher slipper thermal conductivity is useful to improve slipper bearing capability, but the thermal equilibrium clearance is not compromised.

Distribution characteristics and impact on pump＇s efficiency of hydro-mechanical losses of axial piston pump over wide operating ranges

A novel performance model of losses of pump was presented,which allows an explicit insight into the losses of various friction pairs of pump.The aim is to clarify that to what extent the hydro-mechanical losses affect efficiency,and to further gain an insight into the variation and distribution characteristics of hydro-mechanical losses over wide operating ranges.A good agreement is found in the comparisons between simulation and experimental results.At rated speed,the hydro-mechanical losses take a proportion ranging from 87% to 89% and from 68% to 97%,respectively,of the total power losses of pump working under 5 MPa pressure conditions,and 13% of full displacement conditions.Furthermore,within the variation of speed ranging from 48% to 100% of rated speed,and pressure ranging from 14% to 100% of rated pressure,the main sources of hydro-mechanical losses change to slipper swash plate pair and valve plate cylinder pair at low displacement conditions,from the piston cylinder pair and slipper swash plate pair at full displacement conditions.Besides,the hydro-mechanical losses in ball guide retainer pair are found to be almost independent of pressure.The derived conclusions clarify the main orientations of efforts to improve the efficiency performance of pump,and the proposed model can service for the design of pump with higher efficiency performance.

Research on oil film characteristics of piston pair in swash plate axial piston pump

The research on the oil film characteristic of piston pair is beneficial to the design and optimization of friction pair,which can improve the performance of piston pump.The fluid pressure of piston cavity is accurately obtained by AMEsim simulation.Oil film thickness field model of piston pair under the slanting state of piston is established,and the distribution law is numerically analyzed under different speed and pressure by Matlab.The experiment model pump for oil film characteristic of piston pair is designed to measure oil film thickness under the pressure of 18 MPa.The experiment results show that oil film thickness varies greatly under high pressure,and oil film thickness fluctuates sharply under low speed.The minimum oil film thickness increases with spindle speed increasing and oil film characteristic of piston pair based on the numerical analysis method is verified.This method lays a foundation for studying the friction performance of piston pair in the axial piston pump.

Research on two-dimensional fluid vibration axial transmission path model of axial piston pump

High speed and high pressure can enhance the vibration of axial piston pump. A fluid vibration transmission law of axial piston pump is studied in this paper. According to harmonic response analysis results, a transmission path analysis is used to establish a two-dimensional fluid vibration transmission path model in the vertical plane, which has characteristics of multi excitation sources, multi-path and multi-receptors. Model parameters are obtained by experimental and numerical analysis. Matlab is used to solve the model, and acceleration vibration response of three shells is got. To reduce the effect of mechanical vibration, the surface acceleration of pump is tested under low speed condition. Results show that the model can accurately reveal transmission law of fluid vibration and the accuracy is more than 90%. The research lays a foundation for exploring vibration transmission law and vibration control.

Pressure distribution of combining center cavity slipper for axial piston pump

In order to improve lubricating characteristics of slippers in an axial piston pump, the combining center cavity slipper approach was proposed based on slipper shape and moving characteristic. The cylindrical coordinate was used in the lubricant area and mesh was made. The blockweight approach was implemented to deal with non-coincidence of mesh and shallow recess border in numerical method. The finite control volume method was applied in calculating pressure distribution. The flow conservation equation and film thickness model were resolved through Gauss-Siedel relaxation iteration. The calculation and analysis results indicate that compared to the slipper （1） slip- per pressure distribution is improved; （2） hydrodynamic pressure of the combining slipper is greatly increased; （3） inclining degree is greatly reduced; （4） negative pressure in lubricant film disappear. So the combining center cavity slipper is lubricated better.

Tribological Properties of Cylinder Block/Valve Plate Interface of Axial Piston Pump on the Tribometer

The tribological properties of cylinder block/valve plate is an important consideration in the design of axial piston pump.The effect of materials and heat treatment on friction and wear properties has been studied in depth.Engi-neering experiences show that the speed and load also affect the tribological properties,but these have not been systematically analyzed.The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the tribological properties of the commonly used materials(CuPb1 5Sn5 and 38CrMoAl/42CrMo)for cylinder block/valve plate with different heat treatment and con-tact pressure at different speed.During the test,tribometer is used to simulate the contact pattern between the valve plate/cylinder block in axial piston pump,the friction coefficient,wear rate and surface topography are analyzed to evaluate the tribological properties of different types of friction samples at different speed.Results indicate that:(1)contact surface of the samples at 1800 r/min is more prone to adhesive wear than those at 500 r/min;(2)in the terms of wear resistance,quench-tempered and nitrided 38CrMoAl(38CrMoAl QTN for short)is better than quench-tem-pered and nitrided 42CrMo,although they are all commonly used materials in the axial piston pump;(3)2.5 MPa is the critical contact pressure of the interface between valve plate made of 38CrMoAl QTN and cylinder block made of CuPb1 5Sn5 on the tribometer,which implies the pressure bearing area at the bottom of the cylinder block should be carefully designed;(4)the valve plate/cylinder block made of 38CrMoAl QTN/CuPb15Sn5 exhibits good tribological properties in a real axial piston pump.This research is useful for the failure analysis and structural optimization design of the valve plates/cylinder block.