Pump-Back Effect Analysis and Wear Feature Extraction for Hydraulic Cylinder Piston Seal Based on Multisensor Monitoring.

Hydraulic reciprocating seals are dynamic sealing elements used in hydraulic actuators that play a very important role in preventing leakage. In this paper, a multisensor monitoring scheme including Fiber Bragg Grating sensors, fluid pressure sensors, and reciprocating displacement sensor was designed to analyze the leakage of hydraulic cylinder in a complete reciprocating work cycle. A complete hydraulic cylinder reciprocating cycle includes the extending process of piston rod, the full extension of piston rod, the retracting process of piston rod, and the full retraction of piston rod. Through an especially designed test bench, multisensor monitoring data were obtained under different wear degree of the piston seals. The analysis results show that there will be a “pull-back effect” in the return stroke of the piston seal. Therefore, leakage-based monitoring methods used in existing studies may not accurately reflect the wear of piston seals. If it is desired to detect wear of the piston seal during its actual operation, the contact pressure of the piston seal must be monitored. The paper also discusses the wear feature extraction method and how to deal with multiple features extracted from multisensor monitoring signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]