Development of a General-Purpose Simulation Package for Pulsations in Hydraulic Pipelines Generated by Pumps.

Abstract

This study has developed a computer-aided simulation and analysis package that allows engineers who are not familiar with the theory of fluid wave motion in a pipe and numerical simulation, to simulate and analyze the pulsations in any hydraulic pipelines generated by fluid power pumps, and then to substitute components and vary design and/or operational parameters in the design stage for a reduction of fluidborne vibration. The present PC computer-aided engineering tool for the analysis of pulsation can simulate the following five key items which are of the greatest concern for fluid power engineers with regard to the pulsation phenomena in hydraulic systems: (1) frequency characteristics of pressure pulsation level at every point in the circuit (and so on), (2) frequency characteristics of the ratio of pressure pulsations at two arbitrary points, (3) frequency characteristics of the ratio of fluid acoustic powers at two arbitrary points (that is, transmission loss), (4) pressure pulsation waveforms and those spectra, and (5) fluid acoustic powers and those spectra. The experiments carried out on the several basic hydraulic systems show that the calculated results obtained by the present simulation package, HYPULSIP (an acronym for (Hy)___-draulic (Pul)___-sation (Si)___-mulation P___-ackage), agree with the experimental results with sufficient accuracy for practical use.