Power Management in Mobile Hydraulic Applications - An Approach for Designing Hydraulic Power Supply Systems

Throughout the last three decades energy consumption has become one of the primary design aspects in hydraulic systems, especially for mobile hydraulic systems, as power and cooling capacity here is at limited disposal. Considering the energy usage, this is dependent on component efficiency, but even more important is the system topology. However, there are no rules or guidelines for what system topology to choose for a given application, in order to obtain the most energy efficient system, nor for how the energy should be distributed in the system. This paper describes the approach taken in a project to develop rules and methods for designing and controlling mobile hydraulic systems in the most energy efficient way, when also considering the operational aspects of the system. The paper first describes the thoughts and ideas behind the project and then focus on an automated approach to design the hydraulic power supply in the most energy efficient way, when considering a number of load situations. Finally an example of the approach is shown to prove its validity.}