Design and Control of a Variable Displacement Vane Pump for Valveless Hydraulic Actuation

Abstract

This dissertation describes the design, modeling, control and efficiency of a variable displacement vane pump based hydraulic actuation system, which is motivated by the need for enhanced efficiency and compactness in mobile hydraulic actuation systems. The dissertation describes the design of a variable vane pump, and characterizes the pressure/flow characteristics of the fabricated pump. A dynamic model of the variable vane pump based hydraulic actuation system is developed. A linear controller and a model-based nonlinear controller are formulated respectively for displacement tracking control of the pump-driven hydraulic actuation system and their performances are compared. Experimental results of the displacement controlled pump/actuator system indicate the effectiveness of the controller. The efficiency of the proposed system is characterized and measured through experiments, which results show efficiencies of 19 to 48%, depending on different tracking frequencies.