Electro-hydraulics are enhancing off-highway automobile performance and effectivity, enabling machine management and offering the constructing blocks for energy-recovery techniques. Business consultants give perception into the evolution of this expertise and predict future developments
Over the previous three many years off-highway automobile designers have moved away from constructing machines which have hydraulics managed by way of mechanical techniques and hydraulic pilot strains to utilising digital management – electro-hydraulics. However, whereas such techniques are properly established, the complete potentialities of this structure are nonetheless being explored.
Though hydraulic actions are nonetheless very a lot analogue in nature, the controls that operators use are nearly wholly now within the digital age, although the change didn’t come about in a single day, moderately by way of a gradual evolution.
That is borne out by element specs. Danfoss, for instance, after years of designing elements that could possibly be used with both mechanical or digital interfaces, has now utterly transitioned its new elements to electro-hydraulics.
“The interface of our hydraulic merchandise has gone via three levels of evolution,” says Jeff Herrin, senior vice chairman of R&D at Danfoss Energy Options. “The primary stage, relationship again a few years, concerned hydraulic and mechanical interfaces. For instance, a hydraulic pump managed by a lever that an operator might use to create the specified move.
“The second stage launched designs with each lever entry and digital management. This transitional part was needed as a result of business shifts don’t occur in a single day. We would have liked a 10-year plan the place prospects who needed the legacy answer might nonetheless get it, whereas we additionally constructed within the fashionable, future answer of a digital actuator that they may management.
“As soon as we reached a sure stage of adoption, we moved to the ultimate stage: merchandise particularly designed for digital management. These don’t carry the bags of mechanical units, which add price and compromise designs.
“For many of our merchandise we’re already at this final stage so we now not design future merchandise with legacy interfaces. If prospects nonetheless want a mechanical interface, they’ll purchase the older technology, which we nonetheless produce. They’ve completely different efficiency and security ranges, however they continue to be obtainable.
“Our focus now’s on designing hydraulics with digital interfaces as a result of we all know the long run lies in electro-hydraulic techniques. The truth is, 100% of our new product growth packages are focused in that course.”
New methods to maneuver
Lately Volvo Development Gear has used electro-hydraulic structure in its new Impartial Metering Valve Expertise (IMVT), obtainable on 50-tonne EC550 and EC530 excavators.
“IMVT marks a departure from the normal mechanically coupled hydraulic techniques and introduces clever digital management with quite a few variables,” says Sejong Ko, Volvo CE’s product supervisor for giant excavators. “The outcomes are as much as 25% improved gasoline effectivity and higher operator management.”
IMVT allows further options utilizing a closed-centre valve-control system, which in contrast to conventional open-centre techniques, can cease or decrease hydraulic move via the primary management valve when there’s no demand for a hydraulic actuator. This considerably reduces gasoline consumption and eliminates the necessity for an eco mode.
It additionally makes use of impartial cylinder management, sensing and controlling either side of a cylinder’s chamber independently, with out utilizing hydraulic spools and pilot strains. This ends in extra exact management of the excavator’s actions.
“IMVT replaces conventional spools with poppet and electro-hydraulic valves in the primary management valve (MCV), decreasing stress losses and optimizing valve management primarily based on load situations,” says Sejong Ko. “This results in quicker cycle occasions, improved regeneration and diminished move loss, with evaluation displaying a 20% increase in productiveness.”
Hydraulic hybridisation
Regardless of potential vitality restoration ranges in off-highway automobile hydraulics being comparatively small when in comparison with the well-established hybrid techniques utilized in hydraulic braking for automotive; lately, tighter emissions targets and rising vitality prices have supplied better demand, significantly in excavators, which generate essentially the most carbon emissions of any automobile class within the off-highway world.
“But it surely’s not a trivial factor to do in hydraulics,” says Herrin. “It’s important to add extra complexity with extra elements and circuits, and to do it, you completely should have an digital system.”
The worth proposition for that extra complexity has traditionally been pretty poor, with OEMs having to make the commerce off on complexity versus profit. However the rising push for sustainability is driving innovation. “We did a refresh on our industrial pump product line,” says Herrin. “It was designed 30 years in the past and is now being refreshed and up to date to fashionable specs. The spec for this new pump was, in actual fact, to have the ability to recuperate vitality in addition to pump vitality.”
In 2020 Volvo CE first introduced that it had developed a Hybrid system for its excavators which recovers vitality straight from hydraulic techniques, not primarily by utilizing pumps, however as a substitute by the use of a hydraulic accumulator. It captures and reuses hydraulic energy, leading to as much as 17% enhance in gasoline effectivity and 15% discount in CO2 emissions. Lately the OEM introduced this Hybrid expertise could be added to its giant EC400 and EC500 40 and 50 tonne machines, having already been obtainable on 4 smaller automobiles within the vary – the EC380E Hybrid, EC350E Hybrid, EC300E Hybrid and EC250E Hybrid excavators.
“We do it by mounting a hydraulic accumulator simply behind the growth, and because the growth goes down, the high- stress oil that you simply use to retard the growth dropping goes into the accumulator as a substitute of being routed to the tank,” says Dr Ray Gallant of Volvo CE. “This offers the accumulator a high-pressure cost that’s then routed via help motors and put again into the cylinders on the upswing. All the course of is managed mechanically – the operator isn’t required to do something. He merely sees a small image on the sprint that tells him when his accumulator is charging and discharging.”
Volvo CE’s hybrid hydraulic expertise doesn’t generate electrical energy or require batteries for storing it. “It requires minimal elements – there are not any electronics to program and no management techniques apart from system monitoring,” says Gallant. “Upkeep can be easy because the system is a primarily a mixture of hydraulic move and valves.
There are different options which are extra reliant on pumps being able to working in a bi-directional method. For instance, pump- managed actuators handle movement primarily via pace and/or displacement management of particular person pumps, making the pump a central element within the system. It’s on this area that promising applied sciences embody Danfoss’s Digital Displacement pumps, floating cup expertise, and high-speed pumps. “We count on these options to achieve the market over time,” says Hongsuk Kim, head of excavator medium and hydraulic platform at Volvo CE. “Significantly for electrically powered machines, the place bi-directional speed- managed pumps can recuperate vitality again to {the electrical} energy system.”
Sooner or later extra steps could possibly be taken with hydraulic vitality restoration applied sciences. For instance, dead-weight compensation techniques. “These use extra cylinders and hydraulic accumulators working in parallel with the primary hydraulic movement management system and will provide benefits in particular purposes,” says Hongsuk Kim. “These techniques are comparatively easy and shouldn’t face vital hurdles to reaching market readiness.
“A extra superior answer is the frequent stress rail structure, which makes use of one or a number of semi- fixed stress ranges mixed with hydraulic accumulators. On this setup, power and pace are managed via hydraulic transformers and multi-chamber cylinders, which signify state-of-the-art expertise. Even these superior techniques require a number of independently managed valves, very similar to IMVT, demonstrating that our growth efforts in IMVT are paving the best way for future improvements in hydraulic vitality restoration.”
“In the end electrified linear actuation will remove hydraulic fluid on machines”
Electromechanical actuators
Plenty of prototype automobiles, in addition to Bobcat’s manufacturing all-electric T7X and S7X compact observe loaders and skid steers, have finished away with conventional hydraulics altogether and changed them with electromechanical linear actuators. Herrin sees continued evolution within the area. He notes that Danfoss Energy Options is investing in electromechanical actuators as
a complementary product line to their electrification portfolio. Whereas the use circumstances for this expertise are at present modest, Herrin anticipates that, “as electrification takes an even bigger maintain in off-highway gear, in the end electrified linear actuation will remove hydraulic fluid on machines. Rotary actuators (wheel drives, work capabilities) shall be first, steering subsequent, and linear actuators final.
Volvo CE is already making use of electric-motor pushed actuators in a few of its excavators, and studies optimistic buyer suggestions. “It is very important word that electrical motor-driven actuators can work together with hydraulics as an intermediate energy transmission medium or, in some circumstances, with out hydraulics altogether,” says Hongsuk Kim. “Nevertheless, each hydraulic and electrical techniques have their respective benefits and limitations. We don’t imagine that one expertise will absolutely dominate throughout all purposes.
At Volvo, we aren’t dedicated to phasing out hydraulics however as a substitute concentrate on adopting the expertise that most accurately fits our prospects’ wants. We acknowledge the challenges related to electro-mechanical drives, particularly for linear movement purposes. These challenges are much less pronounced for rotary drives, making them extra possible to switch hydraulics now.”
Enabling automation
One of many key benefits of electro- hydraulics is that’s has enabled machine management – whether or not that be semi-autonomous driver help techniques or full automation, with the ability to management actions by way of digital techniques is a important enabler.
“Considered one of our flagship innovation programmes is round autonomy,” says Herrin. “There are only a few use circumstances for absolutely autonomous machines proper now, however there’s an entire lot for semi-autonomous, which imply operators could be much less expert, as a result of the machine can function itself in cycles which are repeatable.”
This development in the direction of automation is driving the necessity for extra superior applied sciences. As Herrin factors out, “If you get into that area, AI and machine studying are required. It’s the core digital algorithm expertise that allows automation.”
This text first appeared within the October challenge of iVT
