Analysis of Innovative Design of Energy Efficient Hydraulic Actuators

Hydraulic cylinder actuators are used extensively in industrial, construction and agricultural works. The small sized outlet ports of the cylinders resist the flow of discharged oil; and as a result the piston motion is slowed down. This causes a lot of heat generation and energy loss within the actuators. The study investigates and analyzes the possibilities of reducing the hydraulic resistance and increasing efficiency of the hydraulic actuator. Conventional hydraulic cylinders are simulated in FLUENT. Results show that the small outlet ports are the sources of energy loss in hydraulic cylinders. A new hydraulic system was proposed as a solution to relieve the hydraulic resistance in the actuators. The proposed system is a four ports hydraulic cylinder fitted with a novel flow control valve. The proposed four ports cylinder was simulated and parameters such as ports sizes, loads and pressures are varied during the simulation. The hydraulic resisting forces, piston speed and mass flow rates are computed. Results show that the hydraulic resistance is significantly reduced in the proposed four ports actuators; and the proposed cylinders run faster than the conventional cylinders and a considerable amount of energyis saved as well.