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Test Bed 1: Mobile Heavy Equipment

High Efficiency Excavator

  • Excavator Slideshow
  • Excavator Slideshow
  • Excavator Slideshow
  • Excavator Slideshow

Leader

Prof. Monika Ivantysynova (Purdue)

Statement of Test Bed Goals

Develop new system concepts based on throttle-less actuator technology to demonstrate fuel savings and the improvement in performance and compactness for the large sector of construction, agricultural and forestry machinery. The excavator will also be used to demonstrate effective control strategies for complex multi actuator systems and robot like machine functions. This will include new human/machine interfaces, including those that provide haptics feedback.

Test Bed’s Role in Support of Strategic Plan

This test bed supports the center first goal to achieve a drastic improvement in efficiency of existing fluid power applications and to reduce petroleum consumption and pollution. The test bed will be used demonstrating fuel savings by more efficient fluid power actuator technology and effective power machine management especially for large and high power equipment. The demonstrated new actuator technology will open new applications in both large scale heavy duty machinery and robots and in human scaled applications like surgery robots, or other portable devices, where efficient and compact actuator technology is necessary.

Primary and secondary attributes to be demonstrated in test bed

The primary attributes to be demonstrated are efficiency improvements achieved by:

  • different concepts of throttle less actuators
  • new system architectures and energy recovery concepts
  • effective power management strategies
  • advanced machine control concepts together with new effective human interfaces
  • engineered fluids
  • new sealing concepts for linear actuators
  • drag reduction due to nano-surface texturing applied to hoses
  • new generation of pumps and rotary motors based on advanced design of rotating group


Secondary attributes to be demonstrated include leak-free operation, noise reduction, and binary on/off control approaches.

Which projects are expected to deliver enabling technologies for integration in the TB?

Primary:

  • 1A: Throttle-less Control and Regeneration for Fluid Power System will provide the actuator concepts including control, system architecture and power management strategy
  • 1B: Advanced surface design will provide the models and technology for design of new generation of pumps and motors, which will be used for displacement controlled actuators.
  • 3A: An efficient multi-modal human interface will be developed and implemented into the testbed in order to effectively interact with automatic control functions
  • 1D: Hoses with modified surfaces using new developed nano-texturing techniques for drag reduction will be implemented into testbed and tested
  • 1E: Fast on/off valve based actuator concepts will be integrated and tested if possible.
  • 1G: Engineered Fluids will be tested in selected actuation systems of the testbed
  • Fast responsiveness of valve controlled systems, and the efficiency of a variable

Secondary:

  • 2D: Engineered materials will be integrated into the testbed if possible.
  • 2E: An integrated design will be developed for implementation in the second phase
  • 3B: Noise reduction techniques will be integrated into the testbed if possible.
  • 3D: New sealing concepts will be implemented in selected components of the excavator and tested if possible.