Development of a New Generation of Independent Metering Valve Circuit for Hydraulic Boom Cylinder Control

Recent research on hydraulic systems has mainly focused on energy saving. This is because the efficiency of hydraulic systems is very low even though they have large power-to-size ratios. In mobile hydraulic equipment, conventional hydraulic spool valves with pressure compensators have already been replaced by valve assemblies with four-valve independent metering with electronically controlled pressure compensation. The independent metering concept and microprocessor control have much more potential to save more energy than conventional proportional valve control because of the increased controllability of the system. The primary focus of this study is to reduce the number of Independent Metering Valves (IMV) by introducing one directional control valve. This new model offers two degrees of freedom, i.e., controlling velocity and pressure, just as in conventional IMVs. In the system described here, two of the three independent valves are active during metering. In this paper, the theory behind a new method of flow control based upon load feedback is presented for two of the five distinct metering modes, and its performance is investigated and compared to that of a conventional IMV configuration.