Design and Analysis of a Swashplate Control System for an Asymmetric Axial Piston Pump

Abstract Based on the previously developed fixed-displacement asymmetric axial piston pump, a variable displacement asymmetric axial piston pump (VDAAPP) with three independent suction/delivery ports is proposed. A basic linear model of VDAAPP is established to get open-loop bode diagram. Based on open-loop Bode diagram features and design requirements, P-controller is determined for VDAAPP. Then VDAAPP's performance is investigated by advanced modeling environment for performing simulations of engineering systems (AMESim) and automatic dynamic analysis of mechanical systems (ADAMS) joint simulation, and some key design parameters are obtained. Next, a VDAAPP prototype with a maximum displacement of 40 cc/rev is designed and manufactured, ratio of flow rates at ports A, B and T is 1:0.6:0.4. Due to hard limitations of the test bench, the performance only under the conditions of the opposite passive loads is tested. Preliminary test results indicate that VDAAPP prototype works normally and meets the design requirements for flow ratio, and the maximum rise time of the test pressure is about 0.32 s. However, due to special design of VDAAPP valve plate, the swash plate torque severely limits system dynamic response. Therefore, an improved swashplate control system based on asymmetric-valve-controlled asymmetric-piston scheme is presented as well, it is found to be an effective way to suppress the negative impact of swash plate torque on system dynamic performance. This provides a direction for the optimization of the swashplate control system for asymmetric axial piston pumps in the future.