This paper investigates the effect of extra weight caused by the Direct Driven Hydraulics (DDH) in a micro-excavator. These projects are investigating the implementation of zonal or decentralized hydraulics for non-road mobile machinery (NRMM) and stationary industrial applications. The benefit of DDH is the combination of electric and hydraulic technologies in a compact package compared to conventional hydraulics, which enables a reduction of potential leakage points, flexible tubing, and boosting of the system efficiency due to switching to direct pump control instead of a loss-generating conventional valve-based control. In order to demonstrate these benefits for the excavator case, this paper proposes a system model approach to assess and predict energy consumption of the zonal hydraulics approach implemented with DDH in various working cycles, complemented by a structural analysis. The finite element analysis utilized for this demonstrated that the extra weight and selected location of DDH units do not negatively affect the structure of the excavator. Simulation results demonstrated that the energy consumption is approximately 15% higher with extra weight added by the three DDH units. Although approximately 20% more regeneration energy is produced, taking into account the regeneration energy, the increases in energy consumption are about 12%.

Since the energy crisis, the further development of a variable speed pump-controlled hydraulic system driven by an electric machine has attracted increasing attention during the past few years. As a response to this, an innovative double pump-controlled asymmetric cylinder system (DPC) and its control method are proposed in this study. The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of two variable speed pump-controlled systems for asymmetric cylinders under a four-quadrant operating condition, in comparison with single pump control (SPC). The four-quadrant operating principles of the two systems are analyzed by simulation. Simulation models for both systems are introduced, and a position control method is proposed, with a tracking differentiator and speed feedforward, plus proportional-integral-derivative (PID) for four-quadrant operation. The DPC model was validated with the measurement of a crane. The simulations using the validated model were performed with a position reference and a varying load (four-quadrant operating arm of an excavator). The results demonstrated that the velocity fluctuation is eliminated by using the DPC instead of the SPC, and the position control performance of the DPC is better compared to the SPC, although the energy efficiency decreases slightly. Hence, the proposed DPC and its position control method are feasible for the four-quadrant operation of asymmetric cylinders.

Link?ping University Electronic Press Conference Proceedings

Government regulations incentivize investigation of the potential for hybridization of non-road mobile machinery (NRMM). Many approaches to energy saving in hydraulic systems have been established. One of the methods first introduced in the aerospace industry is “decentralized” or “zonal” hydraulics. The decentralized system is realized with pump-controlled actuators, which are distributed throughout the system. In this research, decentralized hydraulics are realized with a direct-driven hydraulics (DDH) drive and implemented on a 1-ton class JCB micro excavator. The original valve-controlled system for boom, stick, and bucket is replaced with three DDH units. In a DDH unit, a double fixed displacement pump/motors with a speed-controlled electric servomotor directly controls the amount of hydraulic oil pumped into and out of the system. The hydraulic pump/motors create flows dependant on the rotating speed of the servomotor. A hydraulic accumulator is used as a conventional tank replacement. The aim of this paper is to investigate the efficiency improvement of the excavator with decentralized hydraulics compared to an electrified conventional load sensing system, from an energy consumption point of view under a typical digging cycle. In order to acquire the energy consumption distributions of the DDH and load sensing (LS) system, a model of the micro excavator which comprises mechanics, hydraulics, electronics, and control systems is developed in Matlab/Simulink. Simulation results demonstrate that the total efficiency of the excavator with LS control is 18.3%, and with DDH (decentralized hydraulics) is 71.3 % for a selected typical working cycle.

To provide high output force and to reduce the installation space, the electro-hydrostatic actuator (EHA) usually adopts asymmetric cylinder. However, comprehensive effects produced by its asymmetric flow, parameter uncertainties and unknown disturbance make it difficult to achieve high-accuracy position control. This paper proposed an integral sliding mode backstepping control (ISMBC) based on extended state observer for the asymmetric EHA. Firstly, the principle of the EHA was analyzed and an EHA model was built. Furthermore, the state space equation of the EHA was established based on flow distribution analysis. Two extended state observers (ESO) were designed to achieve real-time estimation of the unmeasured system states, unmatched and matched disturbances. The backstepping method was used to compensate the matched and unmatched disturbance, and an integrated sliding mode controller was developed to eliminate the static error and to improve the response ability. Theoretical analysis indicates that the controller can guarantee the desired tracking performance for the actuator under time-varying unmatched disturbances, and can make the tracking error asymptotically converge to zero under constant matched disturbances. Finally, simulations were performed with the designed controller, backstepping controller and proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller, respectively. Thereafter, detailed comparisons of the control performances were provided. The results show that the proposed controller can achieve better position tracking and stronger robustness in parameter changing compared with the backstepping controller and PID controller.