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The conventional hydraulic system of excavators suffers from significant valve throttling losses and inadequate matching between the hydraulic power source and the load, which substantially impact the system's overall energy consumption and severely impede the trend toward electrification and energy efficiency in construction machinery. To address this issue, a pump-controlled hydraulic cylinder system has been implemented to replace the original valve-controlled hydraulic system that utilizes a single pump with multiple actuators. The influence of energy conversion efficiency and the speed between the motor and the hydraulic pump under varying load-power conditions has been determined through experimental investigations. Based on these findings, a compound-control strategy is proposed that adjusts the displacement of the hydraulic pump to achieve precise control over the position of the hydraulic cylinder and facilitates both the speed and displacement coordination while ensuring optimal motor speed matching with the load power. This strategy is implemented in the boom pump's hydraulic cylinder control system. The research findings indicate that this combined-control approach enhances efficiency by approximately 18.9% compared with traditional variable-speed pump-controlled hydraulic cylinder systems. Furthermore, energy consumption is reduced by about 39% compared with the conventional valve-controlled hydraulic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential energy recovery of hydraulic excavators is very significant for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollutant emissions. However, the more common solutions for potential energy recovery require more energy conversion processes before these potential energies can be reused, which adds to the complexity and high cost of the system. To tackle the above challenges, we proposed a novel energy recovery system for hydraulic hybrid excavators based on the digital pump with an energy recovery function. The new system could operate in three different modes: pump, energy recovery, and direct reuse. Based on the descriptions of the working principle of the digital pump and the whole energy recovery system, the mathematical models of the digital pump, the excavator arm cylinder, and the accumulator were established and the AMESim simulation model (combining mechanics, hydraulics, and electrics) was developed. The dynamic characteristics of the energy recovery system were studied under no-load and full-load conditions. The simulation results showed that this scheme could achieve 86% energy recovery when the boom was lowered and reused the recovered energy directly when raised, which could decrease the system input energy by 78.1%. This paper can provide an optimized solution for construction machinery or off-road vehicles and presents a reference for the research on digital hydraulics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy storage plays a major role in solving the fluctuation and intermittence problem of wind and the effective use of wind power. The application of the hydraulic accumulator is the most efficient and convenient way to store wind energy in hydraulic wind turbines. A hydraulic energy storage generation system (HESGS) can transform hydraulic energy stored in the hydraulic accumulator into stable and constant electrical energy by controlling the variable motor, regardless of wind changes. The aim of the present study is to design a constant speed control method for the variable motor in the HESGS and investigate the influence of the controller's main parameters on the resistance of the HESGS to external load power disturbances. Mathematical equations of all components in this system are introduced and an entire system simulation model is built. A double closed-loop control method of the variable motor is presented within this paper, which keeps the motor speed constant for the fixed frequency of electrical power generated by the HESGS. Ultimately, a series of simulations with different proportional gains and integral gains under the environment of changeless load power step are conducted. At the same time, comparison analyses of the experiment and simulation under variable load power step are performed. The results verify the correctness and the usability of the simulation model, and also indicate that the proposed control method is robust to the disturbances of changing load power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]