Hydraulic Hybrid Vehicle Simulator

The goal of this project was to create an exhibit to demonstrate the fundamental principles of fluid power through an interactive, hands-on exhibit.  The exhibit is to be displayed at the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM).  The success of the exhibit is determined by its ability to educate the public on how fluid power affects their lives.  The intended user of the exhibit includes those who visit the SMM.  This includes a wide demographic of people such as school groups from grades 1 through 12 and families of all ages.  The exhibit is also to be used as a demonstration of the K-12 learning opportunities that the Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power has set forth.  The National Association of Fluid Power would also like to use a portion of the exhibit at trade shows and expos across the country. 

The first step in achieving our goal was to research the current state of the fluid power industry internationally to decide what fundamental principles define fluid power.  With these principles, we began compiling design concepts of exhibits.  After many useful concepts were generated an extensive concept selection process took place.  To allow this exhibit to educate a wider range of the people interacting with, our team decided to divide into two groups of three and design two of the exhibits that were ranked high in the concept generation process.  One exhibit was designed to appeal to a younger audience and the other to an older, more knowledgeable audience.   

The exhibit that appeals to the younger audience is called “Fluid Power Lab”.  It has difference sized cylinders that with piston that the use can push and pull to display the interactions between pressure, area and force.  This system also demonstrates the differences between incompressible and compressible fluids.  The incompressible fluid used is water and the compressible fluid is air. 

The exhibit that appeals mostly to the users between the ages of 12 to adult is called “Hydraulic Hybrid”.  This exhibit was chosen because it demonstrates a recent application of fluid power and because it introduces how fluid power can be used to conserve energy, which is a topic that the public is increasingly interested in.  The Hydraulic Hybrid exhibit has all the actual hydraulic components that are used in hydraulic hybrid vehicles.  The user gets to input the energy by cranking a hydraulic gear pump.  The gear pump drives a hydraulic motor with a actual truck tire attached to it.  It is designed to take the user several seconds of cranking to get the tire up to speed.  Next the user pushes a brake button that makes the fluid flow into an accumulator which stores the kinetic energy in the rotating wheel as pressure.  After the wheel stops rotating, the pressure in the accumulator can be released to re-accelerate the wheel with energy that is lost in traditional mechanical braking systems.

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