Development of a Compact and Tuneable Vibration Compensator for Hydraulic Systems

This publication is about vibration compensators for the attenuation of fluid flow pulsations in hydraulic systems. After a problem definition and an overview of conventional devices, a compact and adjustable mass-spring resonator featuring a hydraulic spring will be presented. The main advantages of this design are: simple and compact design, excellent noise attenuation characteristics, suitability for all pressure levels through mean pressure compensation and the possibility to alter the resonance frequency of the device in both a semi-active and active manner.Besides the description of the working principle, the discussion of some phenomena occurring at high frequencies, the treatment of some design aspects, such as the optimisation of the sealing gap geometry, dimensioning etc. and a section devoted to compactness of vibration compensators, experimental results will be presented which prove the usefulness of the concept.