Solenoid Valve Control Research Articles

DRDO's Portable Low-Cost Ventilator: "DEVEN".

A reliable, portable and low-cost ventilator named “DEVEN” is designed and developed by scientists of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Missile Complex, RCI, DRDO-Hyderabad. This Ventilator is named as DEVEN—DRDO’s Economical Ventilator. DEVEN has features comparable to high-end ventilators and would serve the requirements of a large number of ventilators under the present COVID-19 pandemic situation. Also, DEVEN being a portable ventilator can be used in field application using a portable air compressor and reservoir. Hence, it can be used in an ambulance, any mobile vehicle or for application in any remote/rural area. DEVEN has a micro-controller-operated solenoid valve-based design and is developed by tweaking existing technology being used for hot gas reaction control systems (HRCS), employed in attitude control of exo-atmospheric missiles. HRCS is achieved by actuating solenoid valves through a micro-controller to control the flow of oxidizer as well as fuel. Existing controllers being used for control of electro-mechanical actuators are tweaked for control of the above-mentioned solenoid valves for inspiratory as well as expiratory lines of DEVEN.Graphic abstract

Application of Directional Control Solenoid Valves in Pneumatic Position System

This paper focuses on the ability of application of electro pneumatic position control system based on. double acting pneumatic cylinder actuating by directional control solenoids valves and linked with position sensor. The suggested approach involved practical and theoretical work to realize an efficient pneumatic control system employed conventional solenoid valves instead of proportional or servo valves. It has required to set up a test rig contains the recommended electrical and pneumatic apparatus and involved the mathematical calculations as well as the computer simulation. A compare between practical and theoretical results have been carrying out to investigate the rendering of the suggested position control system including the position sensor. The obtained results showed that it can be used the directional control solenoid valve instead of other types of pneumatic valves such as proportional or servo solenoid valves with acceptable response and achieved position control system with high accuracy.

Preparation and Application of Natural and Low Cost Palm Fibers as an Effective Drag Reducing Agent for Flow Improvement in Iraqi Crude Oil Pipelines

Flow of crude oil in pipelines suffers from a problem of fluid flow pressure drop and high energy consumption for fluid pumping. Flow can be enhanced using either viscosity reduction or drag reduction techniques. Drag reduction (DR) is considered as a most effective and most applicable method. The technique contributes in reducing the frictional energy losses during the flow by addition of little amounts from drag reducing agents. The present work focuses on preparation and application of a new natural and low cost material derived from palm fiber (PF) that has been tested as a drag reducing agent (DRA) for crude oil flow enhancement. This objective has been achieved through designing and constructing of an experimental rig consisting of: a crude oil pipe, oil pump, pressure sensors, solenoid valve and programmable logic control. The additive material (PF) is prepared with different diameters (75µm, 125µm, 140µm) and tested with different concentrations as: 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 mg/L for reducing the drag inside the oil pipe. The experimental results showed that the fiber with 125µm diameter and 100ppm is the best where the percentage of drag reduction reached 43%. Furthermore, the results of this work proved that PF is an efficient and low cost DRA that can be applied successfully in crude oil pipelines as well as its contribution in the waste management.

Design and Build Temperature Control and Monitoring in Diesel Engines Using Mobile

Diesel engines is generally used for industrial and agricultural machines. Few people care about the engine temperature so it is forced to reach temperature of 100oC, which causes overheating of the diesel engine and has an impact on the performance itself. This also uses a hopper cooling system which is certainly not effective, because it's necessary to see that the water in the reservoir is still or not, also not equipped with an engine temperature display so it's difficult to ascertain the temperature inside. This study aims to monitor and control the temperature of cooling water. Operation of temperature control uses a telecontrol system that is connected to network (Internet of Things) so diesel temperature control can be done remotely. Monitoring of temperature and water level in the reserve tank using Web Mobile. In addition, there is a temperature sensor that is used to measure the temperature of the cooling water so that users can monitor the temperature of the diesel engine on Web Mobile. The test results obtained, the temperature sensor has an average temperature reading error of 0.031004%. Diesel engines with controlled solenoid valve cooling systems can produce ideal temperatures compared to when the solenoid valve is open (using the radiator continuously) or when the solenoid valve is Closed (without using a radiator). When the solenoid is controlled the engine temperature can be ideal because the solenoid valve opening and closing system has the lowest temperature of 56.34oC and the highest temperature of only 80.85oC.

Calibration of soil humidity sensors of automatic irrigation controller

The article discusses the issues of increasing the efficiency of irrigation of crops cultivated in agriculture. Precise irrigation is an effective solution to irrigation problems. The methods and means of intellectual irrigation, based on sensors that monitor soil moisture and provide signals to the irrigation control solenoid valve, are described. A block diagram of an automatic drip irrigation system is described. For the experiment, five different types of droppers (A, B, C, D, and E) were used Rivulis Eurodrip brand, three of which are droppers with pressure compensation and two are the droppers without pressure compensation. Three parameters were used to study the characteristics of droppers: flow uniformity; volumetric water flow depending on the inlet pressure; determination of the dropper constant and the volume flow exponent. Droppers were tested at three pressures in the system: 0.05, 0.2 and 0.35 MPa. At each pressure value, the experiment was performed in triplicate. The process of calibrating humidity sensors is described. An analysis is made of the effect of soil moisture on the electrical resistance of the sensor for various types of soils. It is recommended that moisture sensors be calibrated to local soil and water conditions.

Design and Research of High-accuracy and Intelligence Test Device for Gas Water Heater Energy Efficiency

The research subject aims to solve the defects of slow test speed and inefficient for gas water heater energy efficiency. It not only applies modern sensor technology, high reliability data acquisition card, solenoid valve control technology and stable industrial computer, but also adopts LabVIEW language, PID control technology and flow stability judgment algorithms to develop an efficient, accurate and intelligent test system for gas water heater energy efficiency. The test results shows that the measurement repeatability of the test device is superior to the artificial test device and common intelligent test device, and the assessed measurement uncertainty meets the requirements of the national supervision and inspection technical specifications.

Identification of pressure control model in a solenoid valve based on GA-BP neural network

A pressure control solenoid valve (PCSV), which is a sophisticated combination with mechanical characteristics, hydraulic characteristics and electromagnetic characteristics, is studied in this paper. And an identifier is developed for identifying its pressure control model. For obtaining the input and output data of valve, its model is established by AMESIM. MATLAB is utilized to develop the identifier with genetic algorithm-back propagation (GA-BP) neural network to process the data from AMESIM. Simulation is implemented to verify the effect of the designed identifier by choosing proper parameters. In the end, results demonstrate that the identifier designed here can identify pressure control model of the PVSV with high speed and accuracy.

Modelling and evolution of designing the hydraulic circuit for a cable pulling winch machine

The hydraulic circuit, the heart of the fluid powered winch machine, is the sequential arrangement of the major components to smoothly maintain the working mechanism of the machine to achieve its functions. This logical setup is the driving force to convert flow and pressure to speed and torque required to maintain the operation. As it is a congregation of elements like motors, valves and pumps, optimization is a priority to efficiently execute the operation with least losses and more power output. The research is undertaken in view of the drawbacks in the machine manufactured by Elfit Arabia Ltd, Ajman. The drawbacks noticed were backlash, less pulling speed, mechanical imbalance and losses. Hear by with the means of commercial software called Automation Studio, this research focuses on using the mechanical advantages of newly suggested features this circuit to divide the work load thus gaining more control and speed to pull in and pull out the winch rope. This paper ascertains the optimized advantages incurred by replacing with a double capstan motor integrated with a single directional control solenoid valve to shift between the series and parallel modes, an inbuilt motor-braking system for the balance of the movement of the drum motor and the addition of the sequence valve for flow control with experimental analysis, observations and results.

Motion Control of Electro-Pneumatic System based on Directional Control Solenoid Valve

Motion Control of Electro-Pneumatic System based on Directional Control Solenoid Valve

The Main Control System of UUV for Maricultre

The water quality environment is the key to marine aquaculture, which directly affects the quality and output of seafood. Therefore, an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) that can detect seawater environment is designed. The thesis firstly outlines the overall working principle of UUV system, and then focuses on the design and development of the main control board of the STM32-based UUV. Based on the modular design concept, the hardware part mainly includes the main control chip circuit, the timer interface circuit, the attitude detection circuit, the solenoid valve control circuit and the sensor interface circuit. The software part designs the corresponding program flow for different hardware circuit modules. Finally, the main control board model was produced. The development program was written based on the HAL library. Test results show that the performance of the main control board is stable and reliable, and can meet the basic needs of seawater detection.

Nonlinear cascade control of high-response proportional solenoid valve based on an extended disturbance observer

With the gradually increasing usage of high-response proportional solenoid valve in the middle- and high-end electronic hydraulic system, to possess a superior performance controller is always most important for high-response proportional solenoid valve. Thus, many novel nonlinear control algorithms, such as sliding mode control and adaptive robust control, are researched and applied to high-response proportional solenoid valve. However, the strict condition of full-state feedback usually cannot be met, since there are no velocity and acceleration measurements available in high-response proportional solenoid valve. Therefore, we proposed an extended disturbance observer to observe the velocity of the high-response proportional solenoid valve’s spool assembly at first. Or rather, the extended disturbance observer is designed to observe the disturbances in the model of high-response proportional solenoid valve and the velocity is also obtained as a by-product. And then, a nonlinear cascade controller based on the extended disturbance observer is designed. The proposed extended disturbance observer is driven by both the estimation error and the virtual input discrepancy of nonlinear cascade controller. The nonlinear cascade controller is designed by utilizing backstepping technique. The stability of the overall closed-loop system is proved according to the Lyapunov theory. As a comparison, a desired compensation nonlinear cascade controller is also applied to the same high-response proportional solenoid valve. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed nonlinear cascade controller based on extended disturbance observer has an excellent performance under multiple working conditions. Even when the supply pressure has severe fluctuations, the nonlinear cascade controller based on extended disturbance observer can still maintain high performance.

Dynamics of a change in the local density of liquid flow rate and efficiency of mixture separation at periodic irrigation of the structured packing

The use of modern structured packing in the distillation columns allows much more even distribution of the liquid film over the packing surface, but it does not completely solve the problem of uniform distribution of flow parameters over the entire height of the packing. Negative stratification of vapor along the packing height caused by different densities of vapor mixture components and higher temperature in the lower part of the column leads to formation of large-scale maldistributions of temperature and mixture composition over the column cross-section even under the conditions of uniform irrigation of packing with liquid. This work presents the experimental results obtained at periodic packing irrigation with total blocking of the spray nozzle. The experiments were carried out in the distillation column with the diameter of 0.6 m on 10 layers of the Sulzer 500X packing with the total height of 2.2 m. The mixture of R-21 and R-114 was used as the working liquid. To irrigate the packing, the liquid distributor with 123 independently controlled solenoid valves overlapping the holes with the diameter of 3.6 mm, specially designed by the authors, was used. Response of the column to the action of liquid distributor was observed in real time according to indications of 3 groups of thermometers mounted in 3 different cross-sections of the column. The flow meter located at a fixed point of the column cross-section allowed registration of dynamics of a change in the local flow rate density of liquid flowing from the packing.

Study on the arc behaviors under the condition of argon and helium supply alternately

In this paper, a solenoid valve control system was used to supply argon and helium alternately to the welding torch, under the frequency of 1 Hz and 4 Hz. The radial distribution of arc pressure was measured by the water-cooled copper plate with holes, and the arc shape was recorded by high-speed photography. The results indicated the arc produced an obvious effect of pulsed pressure, due to the argon-arc and helium-arc stroked in turn in the process of argon and helium supply alternately at 1 Hz frequency. It produced a strong impact and stirring effect on the metal of molten pool, leading to the improvement of weld penetration and width, and the weld surface presented the typical distribution pattern of fish scale.

Study on the control of automatic transmission proportional solenoid valve at different temperatures

The automatic transmission control unit drives the proportional solenoid valve through PWM. The valve often appears the control fault at an oil higher temperature. Analyze the effect of the proportional solenoid valve on the coil current about the different ATF (Automatic Transmission Fluid) temperatures, PWM duty ratio and frequency. Test the oil output pressure under different parameters. The results show that under the high ATF temperature conditions, depending on different duty cycles to select the frequency that can reach the oil output pressure close to normal operating temperature. It maintains a low electromagnetic valve power loss and a certain flutter.

Development of Wheel Pressure Control Algorithm for Electronic Stability Control (ESC) System of Commercial Trucks.

This paper presents a wheel cylinder pressure control algorithm for application to the vehicle electronic stability control (ESC) systems for commercial trucks. An ESC system is an active system that improves the driving stability by distributing the appropriate braking pressure to each wheel, which is an essential system for safe driving. It is important that the ESC system, through proper braking pressure supply, delivers the correct pressure under control. However, to reduce the cost involved, commercial trucks use a solenoid valve of the on/off-type, rather than a proportional valve that has good pressure control capability. The performance of a proposed wheel pressure control system based on an on/off solenoid valve control was verified by means of experiments conducted using the wheel pressure control algorithm presented in this paper.

Design Improvement of a Linear Control Solenoid Valve Using Mul-tiphysics Simulation

Multiphysics simulation coupled with a 1-DOF (Degree of Freedom) system was carried out to improve the geometrical redesign of the linear control solenoid valve. Since the electromagnetic field is strongly coupled with the flow field, a multiphysics simulation coupled with a 1-DOF system could offer a considerably useful approach in the design and optimization of linear control solenoid valves. First, in order to maintain a constant electromagnetic force on plunger strokes with an external current flow, the electromagnetic component valve was improved through a magnetostaic simulation. Although the hydraulic feedback force widened the controllable pressure range of the linear control solenoid valve, the range of the spool stroke for the pressure control was still narrow for = 0.18~0.84 A. We employed the redesign II model, which improved the electromagnetic and the hydraulic components. The redesign II model was able to accurately control the pressure while the external current was = 0.18~1.0 A, at 68.3% of the total control range.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.mech.24.3.20137

Desired Compensation Nonlinear Cascade Control of High-Response Proportional Solenoid Valve Based on Reduced-Order Extended State Observer

With the gradual improvement of microprocessor, various nonlinear controllers are successfully applied in the electronic hydraulic system (EHS). The high-response proportional solenoid valve (HPSV), as the key component of many middle-end and high-end EHS, attracts many researchers’ close attention. This paper focuses on the method to get a strong robustness and high-performance controller for HPSV. In general, the full-state feedback condition of nonlinear cascade control (NC) cannot be easily satisfied in the industrial application. Therefore, the reduced-order extended state observer (RESO) is proposed to estimate the unmeasured state variables and the lumped uncertainties (mainly the unmodeled uncertainty and disturbance). Then, this paper presents an NC-based RESO for HPSV. To obtain an excellent control performance of NC, the desired compensation is adopted to reduce the interference of measurement noise, especially when the tracking error is reduced to the same order as the measurement noise. The system stability and error boundedness of the desired compensation NC based on RESO (DCNCRESO) are proved theoretically in this paper. To validate the effectiveness of DCNCRESO, several different types of experiments are carried out under different working conditions. Even when the supply pressure has great fluctuation, the DCNCRESO still behaves well, which manifests its strong robustness.

Design of Wireless Sensor Network Bidirectional Nodes for Intelligent Monitoring System of Micro-irrigation in Litchi Orchards

Wireless sensor network (WSN) bidirectional nodes, including the sensing node and the solenoid valve control node, were developed for information collection and micro-irrigation monitoring system in a litchi orchard, aimed at improving the problem of wireless communication barriers and the micro-irrigation management efficiency. The sensing node was composed of an MCU8051, a CC2530 RF chip for communication, a RFX2401for amplification. This node is supposed to collect data from a DHT22 air temperature and humidity sensor, a GY-30 light intensity sensor and a TDR-3 soil moisture sensor. The control node includes an MCU8051, a CC2530 RF chip for communication, and peripheral drive circuits for adapting the bi-stable pulse solenoid valve. The application software and backstage management software were written with these two nodes as the hardware platform, based on ZStack agreement. The maximum effective bidirectional communication distance of the designed nodes reached 1205m in unoccupied regions and 122m in litchi orchards. Within a 30 min working cycle, it could be estimated that two 3.7 V battery with a rated capacity of 3000 mA•h can power the sensing node for time up to 500d. Test results in litchi orchards show that the average packet loss rate is 0.75%. The system was processing smoothly with the above nodes for information acquisition and controlling micro-irrigation in litchi orchards.

Controlled irrigation of a structured packing as a method for increasing the efficiency of liquid mixture separation in the distillation column

The use of modern structured packing in the distillation columns allows much more even distribution of the liquid film over the packing surface, but it does not completely solve the problem of uniform distribution of flow parameters over the entire height of the packing. Negative stratification of vapor along the packing height caused by different densities of vapor mixture components and higher temperature in the lower part of the column leads to formation of large-scale maldistributions of temperature and mixture composition over the column cross-section even under the conditions of uniform irrigation of packing with liquid. In these experiments, the idea of compensatory action of liquid distributor on the large-scale maldistribution of mixture composition over the column cross-section was implemented. The experiments were carried out in the distillation column with the diameter of 0.9 m on 10 layers of the Mellapak 350Y packing with the total height of 2.1 m. The mixture of R-21 and R-114 was used as the working mixture. To irrigate the packing, the liquid distributorr with 126 independently controlled solenoid valves overlapping the holes with the diameter of 5 mm, specially designed by the authors, was used. Response of the column to the action of liquid distributor was observed in real time according to the indications of 3 groups of thermometers mounted in 3 different cross-sections of the column. The experiments showed that the minimal correction of the drip point pattern in the controlled liquid distributor can significantly affect the pattern of flow parameter distribution over the cross-section and height of the mass transfer surface and increase separation efficiency of the column within 20%.

DEVELOPMENT OF A DUAL PURPOSE REFRIGERATION SYSTEM FOR DOMESTIC USE

Refrigeration and air conditioning are very important in the daily activities of man, particularly in the tropical regions of the world; used in the preservation of perishable items, storage of pharmaceutical drugs, controlling of an atmospheric environment either for human/animal thermal comfort or effective performance of a scientific process. This paper is aimed at the design and construction of a dual purpose domestic refrigeration system, that can simultaneously function as a refrigerator and as well as an air conditioner henceforth known as REFACON. The refrigeration system employed was a vapour compression system. The machine was a split configuration with an Indoor and an outdoor unit (condensing unit). The machine used a singular 1,119 W single phase hermetically sealed reciprocating compressor, a fabricated condenser and split evaporator operated by temperature controlled solenoid valve. The system used 0.620 kg of R 22 refrigerant, with a discharge pressure of 1,355 kPa and suction pressure of 360 kPa. The input power was 1,350 W with an output cooling effect of 5,280 W. The combined cooling load/cooling capacity of the machine was 4,500 W. The results of tests conducted showed a total heat rejected of 6,680 W and a total evaporator heat absorption of 5,179 W. The Energy Efficiency Ratio was 3.91 while the Coefficient of Performance was 4.72. This research has shown that the design employed for the heat exchangers was appropriate and Thermal contact resistance cannot be neglected. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt.v35i4.16