Chapter - 1.

Introduction and Scope of Work

1.1 Introduction to Axial-Piston Pumps

A pump is the heart of the hydraulic system necessary for efficient circuit
operation. In hydraulic systems, power is transmitted and controlled through liquid
under pressure and that pressure has created by a positive displacement pump, in
general a swash plate type axial piston pump. Axial-piston pumps find their
applications in fluid power applications for converting mechanical power into
hydraulic power. Major areas of systems that utilize axial-piston pumps include off-
road automotive industry for steering, and propel circuits, manufacturing and
aerospace industries for robotic and navigation control. Notable advantages of using
such types of pump over other power devices are high power density, very stiff
dynamic response and high torque-to-inertia ratio [1]. Most of the pumps and motors
in hydraulic control applications are fixed-displacement type. This is due to their
constructional simplicity with respect to the variable-displacement machines that
require additional arrangements for varying the displacement volume of oil in each
rotation of the shaft. In fact, the arrangement should ideally provide discharge
variation from the pump closely following the actuation demand. Such a design is
termed as pressure-compensated. A hydraulic circuit powered by such a pump does
not require a pressure-relief valve. Consequently, both the power loss in the valve and
the associated rise of oil temperature are minimized. Such pumps are being
increasingly used as the hydraulic power source for the motion control circuits
employed in CNC machines, aircraft wing system, excavators and loaders. Recently,
Norhirni et al. [2] discussed the use of such a pump for regenerative braking system.

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Chapter1 Introduction and Scope of Work

Two conventional pressure-compensated pump designs are the swash-plate

and bent-axis types [3]. For each type, the displacement of oil in and out of the pump
is achieved by the reciprocation of a number of pistons within their respective bores
of a barrel that together with the pistons rotate upon receiving the driving torque from
a motor shaft. This barrel and the pistons are referred as the rotating group.

The volumetric efficiency of the swash-plate pumps is poorer than the bent-
axis design, due to the additional oil leakage at the slippers. However, the lower
inertia of the swiveling mass in the swash plate design makes its response to meet any
change in the discharge demand much faster [3]. A variable-speed fixed-displacement
pump, which has been recently employed by Cho and Burton [4] for varying the
discharge, is expected to have higher efficiency but slower control response than both
of the above types. Therefore, for high-speed hydraulic actuation systems, say for an
aircraft, the swash-plate pump design becomes the natural choice.

Figure 1.1: Schematic of axial piston pump

Figure 1.1 depicts a schematic of a typical axial piston pump. The inclination
of the stationary swash plate with respect to the of the pump barrel causes the pistons,
which are connected with the plate by spherical ball joint, to reciprocate inside the
respective cylindrical bores due to rotation of the barrel along with the pistons. On the
side of the barrel that is opposite with respect to the swash plate, there is a stationary
valve plate containing two large kidney-shaped suction and delivery ports of the pump

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Chapter1 Introduction and Scope of Work

separated by a definite angular gap, known as bridge angle. Liquid volume towards
the valve-plate side of each cylinder is alternately expanded and squeezed, each
lasting for slightly less than half cycle of barrel rotation and interspersed by a small
changeover period for the small kidney-shaped interface, referred as barrel kidney, of
the chamber of a piston to move over from one port to the other. The angular extent of
this barrel kidney is known as barrel-kidney angle. During expansion, the liquid is
sucked from a low-pressure reservoir through a suction port. The squeezing action
causes delivery to an upstream system at a higher pressure through the delivery port.
Due to the discrete phases of the suction and discharge strokes of the pistons, the
discharge and pressure at the pump delivery fluctuate about a mean. These
fluctuations are usually referred to as the flow ripples and pressure ripples and are
often suspected for generating undesirable vibration and noise.

The number of pistons considered here is nine which is mostly used in such
types of pump. The genesis behind this choice of the number of pistons has been
discussed by Manring [5]. It has been stated that, in the industry, where axial-piston
pumps are designed, a certain amount of confusion exists on the part of most
designers regarding the tradeoffs between designing a pump with an odd number of
pistons and designing a pump with an even number of pistons. In the original US
patent which describes the first axial piston pump of its kind [6] the design was shown
to have six pistons. Though it is not exactly clear when the development of a pump
with an odd number of pistons began, it is certainly the case that today almost no one
considers the design alternative which uses an even number of pistons. In fact, the
majority of today’s pumps are designed with a total of nine piston and those
remaining outside of this group are predominantly designed with seven pistons.

The key component responsible for the control of dynamics of the pump is the valve
plate. In some designs there exists a simultaneous overlap between the barrel kidney
and suction/delivery ports at the locations of the top dead center or TDC as well as at
the bottom dead center or BDC on the valve plate. The overlap area together referred
to as “cross-porting” in the pump design engineering [7]. The cross-porting
communicates the delivery and suction kidney ports, which may usually lower the
volumetric efficiency. The trapped-volume design, in which the barrel-kidney angle is

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Chapter1 Introduction and Scope of Work

less than the bridge angle, thereby providing trapped-volume of oil results better
volumetric efficiency with the expense of prominent pressure ripples. However, the
cross-porting is commonly used to benefit the noise issue and pump stability in
practice. Small modifications to the valve plate kidney opening and closing angles,
also known as valve plate timing, have substantial effects on flow ripples as well as
internal forces and bending moments. By postponing the opening to the discharge port
kidney, referred to as pre-compression angle, the piston motion increases the cylinder
pressure. If designed properly, the cylinder pressure should perfectly match to the
discharge pressure when the cylinder links up to the kidney and the compressible flow
pulses into or out from the cylinders are minimized.

By changing the swash plate angle, the control of flow or pressure of axial
piston pumps is achieved and such pumps are then referred as variable displacement
type. The swash plate actuator is controlled by an electro-hydraulic servovalve, which
may be either single-stage or two-stage [8]. Through both theoretically and
experimentally, Yamaguchi and Ishikawa [9] described the characteristics of servo
type displacement control mechanism used in a swash plate type and a bent - axis type
piston pump. A frequent control-configuration for such type of machines is to
maintain a constant discharge pressure while providing a variable flow-rate that
changes depending upon the immediate demand of the application.

1.2 Challenges in the field of Axial Piston Pump System

In spite of several advantages, certain drawbacks are there in using axial-
piston pumps in some applications. Major challenge has been the noise that is
generated during their normal operation and even during standby when they are used
to hold pressure at low displacements. In fact, cyclic loads are created internally
causing vibration in any positive-displacement pump delivering a liquid at a high
pressure. This vibration is transmitted through the pump casing to the rest of the
system, causing component vibration and air-borne noise.

In addition, the pump flow is pulsatile in nature that consists of a periodic

component superimposed upon the mean flow rate. This flow ripple interacts with the
characteristics of the load circuit to produce a pressure ripple, which also leads to

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Chapter1 Introduction and Scope of Work

component vibration and air-borne noise. The generation and transmission of pump
vibration is known as structure-borne noise and can be reduced with flexible
couplings and mountings. However, pressure ripple, also known as fluid-borne noise,
is more difficult to reduce [10]. Nonetheless the reduction in such type of noise is
particularly important in creating low-noise systems because it can be propagated
quite efficiently throughout the pipe-work, leading to vibration at locations remote
from the pump. Consequently, for many hydraulic systems, this fluid-borne noise is
the principal source of hydraulic noise [11]. Kojima and Nagakura [10] and Kojima
and Shinada [12] described the characteristics of fluid-borne noise generated by an
axial piston pump. Additionally, pressure ripple can contribute to fatigue failure of
system components and so can play an important part in determining the overall
reliability of a hydraulic system.

The flow ripple, and thus the pressure ripple, generated by axial piston pumps
are relatively large compared with other positive-displacement pumps. This is
principally because the fluid compression process within axial piston pumps is
relatively sudden. Noisy pumps also tend to wear out earlier than quiet pumps and,
invariably, the noise difficulty has been traced back to the improper design of the
valve-plate slots within the pump. Historically, the techniques used for designing the
valve plate have been experimental in nature [1]. Hence there is a need for an efficient
design methodology through comprehensive mathematical modelling so that the
pressure ripple reduces from axial-piston pumps to achieve an overall reduction in air-
borne noise. Ericson [13, 14] identified the necessity to determine the source flow
and source impedence of the machine in order to facilitate the system integrator
to design quit systems. A novel source flow measurement method, the source
admittance method had been investigated.

Another phenomenon that offers challenge to the designer of axial piston

pump is cavitation. In hydrostatic machines, cavitations mean that cavities or bubbles
form in the hydraulic liquid at the low pressure and collapse at the high pressure
region, which causes noise, vibration, and less efficiency. Cavitations are undesirable
in the pump since the shock waves formed by collapsed bubbles may be strong
enough to damage components. The hydraulic fluid will vaporize when its pressure

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Chapter1 Introduction and Scope of Work

becomes too low or when the temperature is too high. Existing practice to deal with
the problems raising the liquid level in the tank, pressurising the tank, using a booster
pump to increase the inlet pressure, lowering the pumping fluid temperature, and
designing deliberately the pump itself [7]. In axial piston pumps, occurrence of
cavitaion due to trapping phenomenon can be prevented by the proper design of the
valve plate. However, cavitation observed on the layers after the contraction or
enlargement of flow passages [15] are caused by rotating group designs. Yamaguchi
and Takabe [15] discussed the relation between cavitation and the measured cylinder
pressure. A numerical approach for the evaluation of the effects of air release and
vapour cavitation on effective flow rate of an axial piston pump had been reported by
Vacca et al [16]. Following the classical lumped parameter approaches that are
commonly used to simulate hydraulic units, their work uniquely utilised a
mathematical formulation for compressible flows based on an original description of
fluid density. The results showed the calculation of effective flow rate through the
pump at fair and extreme conditions, thus permitting the ability to predict limitations
of the machine.

Investigations were done by Seeniraj [17, 18] on the effects of relief grooves
and pre-compression filter volume in reducing noise. Following the investigation, a
computer based optimization procedure had been developed to assist pump designers
to optimize the rotating group design, especially the valve plate, to achieve reduction
in both fluid borne and structure borne sources of noise in a wide range of operating
condition thereby providing quieter operating of the pump.

The dynamics of the variable displacement pump influences the dynamics of

the overall hydraulic system. Due to this, within the past fifteen years considerable
researches have been reported for these machines [19 - 22]. Most of this research has
focused on using empirical test data or numerical methods for determining the control
torque of the swash plate; however, none of it has concerned itself with other forces
and moments which act upon the swash plate in three dimensions. These forces and
moments must be considered for adequate control and containment of the swash plate
during machine operation. Due to inadequate or flimsy control and containment
design, the swash plate may dislodge resulting, the pump performance unpredictable

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Chapter1 Introduction and Scope of Work

with high potential of failure [23]. Another challenge of the variable displacement
axial piston pump is to achieve accurate adjustment of the discharge flow when the
system pressure exceeds the setting pressure of the pump. Under such situation, the
discharge flow needs to be changed rapidly to the minimum discharge flow.
Therefore, a precise and robust pressure compensator system has to be designed [24].

The above discussion shows that design and optimization of the axial piston
pumps should include the issues like maximal amplitudes of pressure fluctuations,
occurring of cavitation, pump acoustics caused by the induced noises and rotational
torque progression for pressure compensator.

1.3 Scope of Work

The scope of the present work has been grouped in to two parts in order to
address the fixed displacement and variable displacement types. As it has been
identified from the literature review that the valve plate acts a major role to
minimising the pulsation of flow variable the design challenge for such a pump is to
minimise the pressure and flow ripples and the consequent noises. In the first part, the
objective is to design an axial piston pump with special reference to the effect of oil
inertia, which is mostly neglected in the earlier studies, and pre-compression angle of
valve plate in reducing pressure and flow ripple. A detailed parametric study of
groove geometries in terms of groove volume, slope and angular extent has been
aimed. A cavitation-free optimal design of an axial piston pump with cross-port valve
plate has been targeted to achieve through a comprehensive parametric study. The
swash angle together with the pre-compression angle has been aimed to design for
minimising the delivery pressure ripple and maximising the discharge.

In the second part the objective of the study is to model the swiveling
dynamics of a variable displacement pump in terms of the complete free-body
diagrams of the relevant assembly as well as in terms of the individual pistons. This
approach is in contrast to the earlier practices to use empirical relationships based on
test data. A design optimization of the compensator in stand-alone mode has been
attempted by considering a mean torque estimated over a revolution of the barrel from
the predicted variation of pressures within the barrel bores. Finally, a coupled analysis

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Chapter1 Introduction and Scope of Work

of the swash-plate swiveling and barrel-pressure dynamics has been aimed at to

recommend a viable compensator design.

1.4 Outline of the Thesis

The main work of the thesis is reported in five chapters followed by one
appendix. The core work of the thesis is organised in two parts, one for the fixed
displacement axial piston pump and the other for the compensator design of a variable
displacement axial piston pump. Two Chapters have been devoted for the analysis of
fixed displacement axial piston pump. For the analysis of axial piston pump with
pressure compensator, a separate chapter has been devoted.

Following general introduction and scope of work in Chapter 1, a detailed

mathematical model that attempts to find an explicit solution of pressures within each
silencing groove and pump ports has been developed in Chapter 2. The developed
model has been implemented in Matlab-Simulink for dynamic simulation of the pump
flow. This chapter also reports the importance for the consideration of oil inertia in
the modelling followed by the validation of the developed model with an existing
experimental result.

Using the fixed displacement axial piston pump model, Chapter 3 reports an
effective design analysis tool for minimising the pressure and flow ripples. A detailed
parametric study has been performed and the optimum angles for the valve plate pre-
compression and the barrel kidneys have been obtained.

Chapter 4 details the designing of a pressure compensator with a spool valve

actuating the control and bias cylinders for a variable displacement axial piston pump.
The design optimization methodology has been reported by considering the coupled
dynamics of the pressure compensator and the main flow through the piston bores.

The overall work is being summarized and the major contributions of the work
have been noted in Chapter 5. Some possible considerations for future scope of work
have also been reported in the chapter.