Energy Saving in the Hydraulic Cylinders by Using Novel Self-Actuated Flow Control Valve (SAFCV)

Hydraulic power technologies often work continuously around the clock, handling large amounts of power in all kinds of Industrial and mobile machineries. Even little improvements in the efficiency of the power hydraulic systems will have an enormous amount of energy saving and a significant economic impact on the overall Lifecycle cost of the growing number of the hydraulic machineries. The study intended to propose fast and efficient power hydraulic actuators. The proposed hydraulic system involved a modification of the existing linear hydraulic cylinder by adding two new ports to it. A unique self-actuated flow control valve was also proposed so as to maintain the integration of the proposed four ports cylinder in the traditional hydraulic system and to preserve the controllability of the existing directional valves of the traditional system. The power and energy losses in the hydraulic cylinders were studied, discussed and analyzed. The results showed that at some high piston speeds as 0.22 m/s some of the conventional cylinders loss 9.2% of their driving power. The power loss at the same mentioned speed was reduced to 2.8% with the use of the proposed four-ports cylinders system. This means 6.4% of the system power was saved by adding two additional ports to the existing conventional hydraulic cylinder. Experimental validation of the results was performed and the performance of the proposed system was tested. The results of the experiments showed good agreement with those from the simulations.