Nonlinear Characteristic Analysis of Gas-Interconnected Quasi-Zero Stiffness Pneumatic Suspension System:A Theoretical and Experimental Study

Because of significantly changed load and complex and variable driving road conditions of commercial vehicles,pneumatic suspension with lower natural frequencies is widely used in commercial vehicle suspension system.How ever,traditional pneumatic suspension system is hardly to respond the greatly changed load of commercial vehicles To address this issue,a new Gas-Interconnected Quasi-Zero Stiffness Pneumatic Suspension(GIQZSPS)is presented in this paper to improve the vibration isolation performance of commercial vehicle suspension systems under frequent load changes.This new structure adds negative stiffness air chambers on traditional pneumatic suspension to reduce the natural frequency of the suspension.It can adapt to different loads and road conditions by adjusting the solenoid valves between the negative stiffness air chambers.Firstly,a nonlinear mechanical model including the dimensionless stiffness characteristic and interconnected pipeline model is derived for GIQZSPS system.By the nonlinear mechanical model of GIQZSPS system,the force transmissibility rate is chosen as the evaluation index to analyze characteristics.Furthermore,a testing bench simulating 1/4 GIQZSPS system is designed,and the testing analysis of the model validation and isolating performance is carried out.The results show that compared to traditional pneumatic suspension,the GIQZSPS designed in the article has a lower natural frequency.And the system can achieve better vibration isolation performance under different load states by switching the solenoid valves between air chambers.

A Kind of PWM Pneumatic Servo Control System——Modulation Methods and Dynamic Responses

Vibrations or dither's are features of the PWM servo control system in their steady outputs. On the grounds of analyses and experiments of a PWM pneumatic servo control system, the paper puts forward four varieties of PWM modulation methods, and concludes on the relationship between dithers and the different methods, and then discusses the influence of friction to the dithers. Results from experiments regarding the dynamic and static responses on the given system support the theories presented.

Property Analyses and Experiment Studies of a Kind of PWM System

The properties and the design of PWM systems are discussed. The relations among the orifice areas of the valves, initial times and the rate of piston areas are deduced. Also a PWM system is designed and some experiments are done. The experiment results agree with those of theory analyses. It can be shown that the relations are correct and the conclusion of theory analyses is reasonable.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the Chinese literature for the treatment of achalasia

AIM: To evaluate the effect of different approaches in the treatment of achalasia in China. METHODS: We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of Chinese literature by searching the Chinese Biomedical Database and Chinese scientific Journals database (up to March 2008). All cohort studies (controlled or uncontrolled) in which the patients were observed for more than a year were reviewed in detail. Dichotomous outcomes were reported as relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) for controlled trials. The efficacy in uncontrolled trials was assessed by a pooled estimate of response rate with individual studies weighted in proportion to the sample size. RESULTS: Seven controlled trials compared the effect of botulinum toxin injection (BoTx) with pneumatic dilation (PD). PD was superior to BoTx [65.2% vs 45.3%; RR 1.47 (95% CI 1.23-1.77), P < 0.0001], and had a lower clinical relapse rate (BoTx 30.2% vs PD 10%, RR 0.32 (0.16-0.65), P = 0.001). Heller myotomy (HM) had superior remission rate compared to PD [HM 94.0% vs PD 64.1%, RR 1.48 (1.15-1.99), P = 0.002]. In uncontrolled trials, the effectiveness of PD was 86.6% (23.9%) vs 94.8% (10.6%) for HM. The main complications of PD were perforation and gastroesophageal reflux disease. CONCLUSION: HM is the most effective long-term treatment for patients with achalasia in China. In the future, controlled clinical trials on the treatment of achalasia should focus on comparing laparoscopic myotomy with or without antireflux procedure,including different partial and total fundoplication techniques.

Adaptive Backstepping Slide Mode Control of Pneumatic Position Servo System

With the price decreasing of the pneumatic proportional valve and the high performance micro controller, the simple structure and high tracking performance pneumatic servo system demonstrates more application potential in many fields. However, most existing control methods with high tracking performance need to know the model information and to use pressure sensor. This limits the application of the pneumatic servo system. An adaptive backstepping slide mode control method is proposed for pneumatic position servo system. The proposed method designs adaptive slide mode controller using backstepping design technique. The controller parameter adaptive law is derived from Lyapunov analysis to guarantee the stability of the system. A theorem is testified to show that the state of closed-loop system is uniformly bounded, and the closed-loop system is stable. The advantages of the proposed method include that system dynamic model parameters are not required for the controller design, uncertain parameters bounds are not need, and the bulk and expensive pressure sensor is not needed as well. Experimental performance, as compared with some existing methods. results show that the designed controller can achieve better tracking

Methods to Evaluate and Measure Power of Pneumatic System and Their Applications

Pneumatic system has been widely used throughout industry, and it consumes more than billions kW h of electricity one year all over the world. So as to improve the efficiency of pneumatic system, its power evaluation as well as measurement methods should be proposed, and their applicability should be validated. In this paper, firstly, power evaluation and measurement methods of pneumatic system were introduced for the first time. Secondly, based on the proposed methods, power distributions in pneumatic system was analyzed. Thirdly, through the analysis on pneumatic efficiencies of typical compressors and pneumatic components, the applicability of the proposed methods were validated. It can be concluded that, first of all, the proposed methods to evaluation and measurement the power of pneumatic system were efficient. Furthermore, the pneumatic power efficiencies of pneumatic system in the air production and cleaning procedure are respectively about 35%–75% and 85%–90%. Moreover, the pneumatic power efficiencies of pneumatic system in the transmission and consumption procedures are about 70%–85% and 10%–35%. And the total pneumatic power efficiency of pneumatic system is about 2%–20%, which varies largely with the system configuration. This paper provides a method to analyze and measure the power of pneumatic system, lay a foundation for the optimization and energy-saving design of pneumatic system.

Analysis of Power Matching on Energy Savings of a Pneumatic Rotary Actuator Servo-Control System

When saving energy in a pneumatic system,the problem of energy losses is usually solved by reducing the air supply pressure.The power-matching method is applied to optimize the air-supply pressure of the pneumatic system,and the energy-saving effect is verified by experiments.First,the experimental platform of a pneumatic rotary actuator servo-control system is built,and the mechanism of the valve-controlled cylinder system is analyzed.Then,the output power characteristics and load characteristics of the system are derived,and their characteristic curves are drawn.The employed air compressor is considered as a constant-pressure source of a quantitative pump,and the power characteristic of the system is matched.The power source characteristic curve should envelope the output characteristic curve and load characteristic curve.The minimum gas supply pressure obtained by power matching represents the optimal gas supply pressure.The comparative experiments under two different gas supply pressure conditions show that the system under the optimal gas supply pressure can greatly reduce energy losses.

Pneumatic active suspension system for a one-wheel car model using fuzzy reasoning and a disturbance observer

This paper presents the construction of a pneumatic active suspension system for a one-wheel car model using fuzzy reasoning and a disturbance observer. The one-wheel car model can be approximately described as a nonlinear two degrees of freedom system subject to excitation from a road profile. The active control is composed of fuzzy and disturbance controls, and the active control force is constructed by actuating a pneumatic actuator. A phase lead-lag compensator is inserted to counter the performance degradation due to the delay of the pneumatic actuator. The experimental result indicates that the proposed active suspension improves much the vibration suppression of the car model.

Self-sustained Oscillation Pulsed Air Blowing System for Energy Saving

Currently, many studies have been made for years on dimensions of pneumatic nozzle, which influence the flow characteristic of blowing system. For the purpose of outputting the same blowing force, the supply pressure could be reduced by decreasing the ratio of length to diameter of nozzle. The friction between high speed air and pipe wall would be reduced if the nozzle is designed to be converging shape comparing with straight shape. But the volume flow and pressure, discussed in these studies, do not describe energy loss of the blowing system directly. Pneumatic power is an innovative principle to estimate pneumatic system’s energy consumption directly. Based on the above principle, a pulse blowing method is put forward for saving energy. A flow experiment is carried out, in which the high speed air flows from the pulse blowing system and continuous blowing system respectively to a plate with grease on top. Supply pressure and the volume of air used for removing the grease are measured to calculate energy consumption. From the experiment result, the pulse blowing system performs to conserve energy comparing with the continuous blowing system. The frequency and duty ratio of pulse flow influence the blowing characteristic. The pulse blowing system performs to be the most efficient at the specified frequency and duty ratio. Then a pneumatic self-oscillated method based on air operated valve is put forward to generate pulse flow. A simulation is made about dynamic modeling the air operated valve and calculating the motion of the valve core and output pressure. The simulation result verifies the system to be able to generate pulse flow, and predicts the key parameters of the frequency and duty ratio measured by experiment well. Finally, on the basis of simplifying and solution of the pulse blowing system’s mathematic model, the relationship between system’s frequency duty ratio and the dimensions of components is simply described with four algebraic equations. The system could be designed with specified frequency and duty ratio according to the four equations. This study provides theoretical basis for designing energy-saving air blowing system.

Control strategy for pneumatic rotary position servo systems based on feed forward compensation pole-placement self-tuning method

The pneumatic rotary position system, in which an electro-pneumatic proportional flow valve controled a rotary cylinder, was studied, and its mathematical model was built. The model indicated that the controlled pneumatic system had disadvantages such as inherent non-linearity and variations of system parameters with working points. In order to improve the dynamic performance of the system, feed forward compensation self-tuning pole-placement strategy was adopted to place the poles of the system in a desired position in real time, and a recursive least square method with fixed forgetting factors was also used in the parameter estimation. Experimental results show that the steady state error of the pneumatic rotary position system is within 3% and the identified system parameters can be converged in 5 s. Under different loads, the controlled system has an excellent tracking performance and robustness of anti-disturbance.

Asymmetric Fuzzy Control of a Positive and Negative Pneumatic Pressure Servo System

The pneumatic pressure control systems have been used in some fields. However, the researches on pneumatic pressure control mainly focus on constant pressure regulation. Poor dynamic characteristics and strong nonlinearity of such systems limit its application in the field of pressure tracking control. In order to meet the demand of generating dynamic pressure signal in the application of the hardware-in-the-loop simulation of aerospace engineering, a positive and negative pneumatic pressure servo system is provided to implement dynamic adjustment of sealed chamber pressure. A mathematical model is established with simulation and experiment being implemented afterwards to discuss the characteristics of the system, which shows serious asymmetry in the process of charging and discharging. Based on the analysis of the system dynamics, a fuzzy proportional integral derivative （PID） controller with asymmetric fuzzy compensator is proposed. Different from conventional adjusting mecha- nisms employing the error and change in error of the controlled variable as input parameters, the current cham- ber pressure and charging or discharging state are chosen as inputs of the compensator, which improves adaptability. To verify the effectiveness and performance of the pro- posed controller, the comparison experiments tracking sinusoidal and square wave commands are conducted. Experimental results show that the proposed controller can obtain better dynamic performance and relatively consis- tent control performance across the scope of work （2-140 kPa）. The research proposes a fuzzy control method to overcome asymmetry and enhance adaptability for the positive and negative pneumatic pressure servo system.

Neural-network adaptive controller for nonlinear systems and its application in pneumatic servo systems

In this paper, a novel control law is presented, which uses neural-network techniques to approximate the affine class nonlinear system having unknown or uncertain dynamics and noise disturbances. It adopts an adaptive control law to adjust the network parameters online and adds another control component according to H-infinity control theory to attenuate the disturbance. This control law is applied to the position tracking control of pneumatic servo systems. Simulation and experimental results show that the tracking precision and convergence speed is obviously superior to the results by using the basic BP-network controller and self-tuning adaptive controller.

An Active Endoscopy Robotic System for Direct Tracheal Inspection

The development of active endoscopy techniques is one important area of medical robot.This paper designed a new flexible and active endoscopy robotic system for direct tracheal inspection.The mobile mechanism of the robot is based on the inchworm movement actuated by pneumatic rubber actuator.There are five air chambers controlled independently,by adjusting pressures in air chambers,the robot can move in a straight mode or in a bending mode.The inspection sensors and some therapy surgery tools can be equipped in the front of the robot.The prototype was made and its mechanical characteristics were analyzed.The robot could move smoothly in a small plastic tube,and the robot is respectable to be used for inspection in human trachea directly.

Sewerage Force Adjustment Technology for Energy Conservation in Vacuum Sanitation Systems

The vacuum sanitation is the safe and sound disposal approach of human excreta under the specific environments like flights, high speed trains and submarines. However, the propulsive force of current systems is not adjustable and the energy consumption does not adapt to the real time sewerage requirement. Therefore, it is important to study the sewerage force adjustment to improve the energy efficiency. This paper proposes an energy conservation design in vacuum sanitation systems with pneumatic ejector circuits. The sewerage force is controlled by changing the systematic vacuum degree according to the amount of the excreta. In particular, the amount of the excreta is tested by liquid level sensor and mass sensor. According to the amount of the excreta, the relationship between the excreta amount and the sewerage force is studied to provide proper propulsive force. In the other aspect, to provide variable vacuum degrees for different sanitation requirements, the suction and discharge system is designed with pneumatic vacuum ejector. On the basis of the static flow-rate characteristics and the vacuum generation model, the pressure response in the ejector circuit is studied by using the static flow rate characteristics of the ejector and air status equation. The relationship is obtained between supplied compressed air and systematic vacuum degree. When the compressed air is supplied to the ejector continuously, the systematic vacuum degree increases until the vacuum degree reaches the extreme value. Therefore, the variable systematic vacuum degree is obtained by controlling the compressed air supply of the ejector. To verify the effect of energy conservation, experiments are carried out in the artificial excreta collection, and the variable vacuum-degree design saves more than 30% of the energy supply. The energy conservation is realized effectively in the new vacuum sanitation systems with good application prospect. The proposed technology provides technological support for the energy conservation of vacuum sanitation systems.

Influential Factors in Safety Design of Aircraft Pneumatic Duct System

The reliability and safety of the pneumatic ducts are essential for flight safety.A beam element model of the duct system is developed and the factors that impact the stress performance of the duct system are investigated,such as stress check standards,flight acceleration,internal temperature and internal pressure.The results show that the stress synthetic method as the stress check standard can obtain the more safety design results.The maximum stress of straight pipe is affected significantly by the acceleration in a plane perpendicular to straight pipe,while the maximum stress of bend pipe is greatly affected by the acceleration in the direction perpendicular to plane of the bend pipe.Meanwhile,internal pressure has little effect on the maximum stress of bend pipe and straight pipe.Temperature has little effect on the maximum stress of bend pipe while has a big impact on the maximum stress of straight pipe.

Performance analysis of a pneumatic to servo converted system for electrode actuation in resistance spot welding using 304L austenitic stainless steel

A high current, AC waveform controller with C-type body frame of spot welder(75 k VA), was examined for the electrode actuating system whose pneumatically driven system has been redesigned and refitted for the servo based system without any vertical spring assistance in the 50 mm movable distance. Moreover, the pressing mechanism was carefully handled during the entire pressing tasks as to ensure that no catastrophic reaction happens for the electrodes' caps, electrodes' holders as well as the other part of mechanical assembly. With the mechanically originated-pneumatic and also the converted-servo systems, the stainless steels are welded for both systems to characterize the improvements. While the welding processes were carried out, the electrical signals have been captured to compute the signals' representation of entire sequences. Later, the welded samples were underwent the tensile shear test, metallurgical observation and hardness test. The analytical results show distinct changes in the force profiles which has led to profound changes in mechanical properties of welded specimens.

New Asymmetric Fuzzy PID Control for Pneumatic Position Control System

A fuzzy control algorithm of asymmetric fuzzy strategy is introduced for a servo-pneumatic position system. It can effectively solve the difficult problems of single rod low friction cylinders, which are mainly caused by asymmetric structures and different friction characteristics in two directions. On the basis of this algorithm, a traditional PID control is used to improve dynamic performance. Furthermore, a new asymmetric fuzzy PID control with α factor is advanced to improve the self-adaptability and robustness of the system. Both the theoretical analyses and experimental results prove that, with this control strategy, the dynamic performance of the system can be greatly improved. The system using this control algorithm has strong robustness and it obtains desired overshoot and repeatability in both transient and steady-state responses.

ANALYTICAL SOLUTION OF FILLING AND EXHAUSTING PROCESS IN PNEUMATIC SYSTEM

The filling and exhausting processes in a pneumatic system are involved with many factors, and numerical solutions of many partial differential equations are always adapted in the study of those processes, which have been proved to be troublesome and less intuitive. Analytical solutions based on loss-less tube model and average friction tube model are found respectively by using fluid net theory, and they fit the experimental results well. The research work shows that： Fluid net theory can be used to solve the analytical solution of filling and exhausting processes of pneumatic system, and the result of loss-less tube model is close to that of average friction model, so loss-less tube model is recommended since it is simpler, and the difference between filling time and exhausting time is determined by initial and final pressures, the volume of container and the section area of tube, and has nothing to do with the length of the tube.

Gas-Solid Flow Behavior in a Pneumatic Conveying System for Drying Applications: Coarse Particles Feeding with a Venturi Device

The feeding of coarse particles (>0.5 mm diameter) directly into a riser operating at positive pressure is important for drying and pre-heating applications. The presence of the feeding device can lead to heterogeneity of drying and heating, and is the main factor responsible for pressure loss in short conveying systems. However, there is a lack of information concerning the axial and radial distributions of coarse particles in this type of configuration, despite the recent advances when dealing with fine particles (FCC catalyst). The present work therefore investigates a vertical venturi feeder with the conveying system operating in dilute-phase regime with 1 mm spherical glass particles. Experimental assays revealed the behavior of the mass flow rate of solids in the system, and pressure measurements were made along the riser in order to evaluate the accuracy of simulations. Euler-Euler simulations provided close estimation of the experimental pressure drop and the pressure drop according to distance in the linear region. Simulation of the fluid dynamics in the riser showed that solids clusters were formed at low concentrations near the feeding device, reflecting heterogeneity in the solid phase volume fraction.

Comprehensive Parameter for Analyzing Condensation in Pneumatic System

The condensation in pneumatic system is a complex physical phenomenon dependant upon status variation and phase transitions,which are related to the parameters of the compressed air,atmospheric conditions and the dimensions of the pneumatic components.Up to now,general research method for this problem is to calculate the status variation and movement quantity by numerical simulation and experiment directly.The comprehensive parameters composed of several different effect factors are rarely used to study the condensation.The composed components and the working conditions of each cylinder are different,a large number of experiments and complex calculations are necessary to determine the condensation.Additionally,the transferability of the determined results is poor.In this paper,the charging and discharging systems of serials cylinder with different structure parameters are studied.The condensation of the systems is observed and the effects of the structure parameters on condensation are analyzed.The changing trends of relative humidity,natural frequency and average speed against the structural parameters of the components during discharge of the pneumatic systems are analyzed.Three comprehensive parameters used to analyze and determine condensation composed by structure parameters of components are proposed,namely,the ratio of the effective area of the discharge tube and the container volume,the square root of the effective area of the discharge tube divided by the product of the container volume and the length of the discharge tube,and the discharge dimensionless tube-volume.The experimental results show that these comprehensive parameters can be used to quantitatively determine whether internal,external or zero condensation occurs in a pneumatic system,and can be also used to quantitatively analyze the experimental data of condensation in pneumatic systems directly.At the same time,the effect factors are too much and the effect relationships are very complex,which causes that the conclusions can＇t be put forward by using single effect factor in experimental data processing individually.The three obtained comprehensive parameters can be used to resolve the above problem.The proposed parameters can also resolve the problem of poor transferability in determining the state of condensation in pneumatic systems,and provide a novel method for the further study of condensation theory.