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Abstract



Energy efficient, Electric-Hydraulic Power Pack


Along with increased oil prices and rising environmental issues, a demand for alternatives to combustion engine driven hydraulic applications has risen. In the field of mobile hydraulics, the hydraulic applications have traditionally been driven by the combustion engine of the vehicle on which they are mounted. By instead using a battery driven power pack the hydraulic application is able to operate without the engine running, saving fuel costs and reducing sound levels. In this thesis, the concept of using an electric-hydraulic power pack with a variable-speed electric motor and a fixed-displacement hydraulic pump to provide power to a truck-mounted loader crane is investigated. This concept is compared to an electric-hydraulic system imitating the conventional combustion engine system by using a fixed-speed electric motor connected to a variable-displacement pump. The use of a variable speed motor where the speed can be controlled electrically by a control unit creates possibilities of using different control strategies to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the application. The efficiencies of the two electric-hydraulic systems are compared by constructing a physical test rig and performing measurements in a test lab. The tests have shown an increased efficiency of about 20 \% when using the variable speed configuration. Three different control strategies are also investigated and tested on a simulated model. The simulations show that very good responsiveness and robustness can be achieved by using a hydraulic flow feed forward controller with a complementary pressure feedback controller. Furthermore, by controlling the hydraulic flow to the heaviest of the crane loads entirely with the flow from the hydraulic pump, the hydraulic pressure can be reduced and energy efficiency increased.

Johan Nyman and Amy Rankka

2015

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Last updated: 2021-11-10