High speed on/off valve control hydraulic propeller

Abstract

The work-class remotely-operated-underwater-vehicles (ROVs) are mainly driven by hydraulic propulsion system, and the effeciency of hydraulic propulsion system is an important performance index of ROVs. However, the efficiency of traditional hydraulic propulsion system controlled by throttle valves is too low. Therefore, in this paper, for small and medium ROVs, a novel propulsion system with higher efficiency based on high speed on/off valve control hydraulic propeller is proposed. To solve the conflict between large flow rate and high frequency response performance, a two-stage high speed on/off valve-motor unit with large flow rate and high response speed simultaneously is developed. Through theoretical analysis, an effective fluctuation control method and a novel pulse-width-pulse-frequency-modulation (PWPFM) are introduced to solve the conflict among inherently fluctuation, valve dynamic performance and system efficiency. A simulation model is established to evaluate the system performance. To prove the advantage of system in energy saving, and test the dynamic control performance of high speed on/off valve control propeller, a test setup is developed and a series of comparative experiments is completed. The smimulation and experiment results show that the two-stage high speed on/off valve has an excellent dynamic response performance, and can be used to realize high accuracy speed control. The experiment results prove that the new propulsion system has much more advantages than the traditional throttle speed regulation system in energy saving. The lowest efficiency is more than 40%. The application results on a ROV indicate that the high speed on/off valve control propeller system has good dynamic and steady-state control performances. Its transient time is only about 1 s–1.5 s, and steady-state error is less than 5%. Meanwhile, the speed fluctuation is small, and the smooth propeller speed control effect is obtained. On the premise of good propeller speed control performance, the proposed high speed on/off valve control propeller can improve the effeciency of ROV propulsion system significantly, and provides another attractive ROV propulsion system choice for engineers.