Zengguang Liu's research while affiliated with Lanzhou University of Technology and other places

The wind turbine with digital hydraulic transmission can make the corresponding hydraulic pump work according to the wind speed, so that the hydraulic wind turbine can maintain high efficiency at the whole working wind speed. However, the switching of different displacement hydraulic pumps will cause a large flow impact on the hydraulic system of the wind turbine, affecting its working characteristics and the absorption of wind energy. Based on the analysis of the working principle of the digital hydraulic wind turbine, the scheme of a 5 MW wind turbine is designed and the AMESim model is established. The dynamic characteristics of the digital hydraulic wind turbine under two switching modes are compared. An advance valve closing control strategy is proposed to reduce the instantaneous flow impact. Simulation results show that the control strategy diminished the system flow shock by about 50% when switching the hydraulic pump. Finally, a hardware-in-loop system with a 5.5 kW digital hydraulic turbine is built to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. The research results provide a theoretical basis and technical reference for the efficient utilization of wind energy and stable operation of the digital hydraulic wind turbines.

There is a permanent and strong need for energy recovery to improve the efficiency of the hydraulic system in the field of the construction machinery. In addition, the digital pump will become powerful and versatile by employing different configurations and intelligent control of the flow distribution valves. Considering this case, we have proposed a novel digital pump in which every plunger is equipped with two flow distribution valves. By controlling these two valves, external hydraulic energy can be directly reused without other components. Based on the structure and working principle of the digital pump, the mathematical model is established and three working modes are detailed. To verify the feasibility and correctness of control methods, a performance simulation testing platform including a digital pump, load module, hydraulic energy to be recovered, and controller module was developed in AMESim R15 software. The pressure, flow rate, and torque simulations of the digital pump in three working modes were carried out. The simulation results have shown that the digital pump not only can be used as an ordinary pump but also has the function of recovery and immediate reutilization of another hydraulic energy. Meanwhile, the corresponding variable displacement control strategy is effective and the positive torque required to drive the digital pump can be reduced, which verified the energy-saving of this scheme. The ideas and contents in this paper can offer significant references for energy conservation technology of various engineering machineries and the intensive study of digital hydraulics.

Perfect flow distribution is extremely important and essential for digital pumps. However, the fluctuation of motor speed and the change of valve dynamic characteristics cause the flow distribution flaw, which generates the backflow of the oil in the piston chamber and the decrease in pump volumetric efficiency. Based on the three-dimensional and mathematical modeling of the digital pump, the perfect distribution state of the digital pump is analyzed. Then, the adverse effects of the variations in motor speed and valve dynamic characteristics on the flow distribution of the digital pump were simulated and investigated by the software AMESim. To overcome the aforementioned problems, we proposed an adaptive control method for the flow distribution valve of a digital pump, which was realized by adopting the axis rotation angle and the pressure difference between the inlet and outlet of the flow distribution valve. The results show that the control signal of the flow distribution valve can be regulated automatically along with the motor speed and the valve dynamic characteristics, achieving the ideal flow distribution of the digital pump designed in this paper. The study can be used as a reference for the optimal design and prototype manufacturing of the digital pump.

Digital hydraulic technology as an emergent and important branch of fluid power offers good prospects for intelligence, integration, and energy saving of hydraulic systems. The high-speed on-off valve (HSV) that is a critical component of digital hydraulics has the drawbacks of specific design, narrow scope of application and high price compared to the commercial solenoid screw-in cartridge valve (SCV) widely used in the hydraulic industry at present. In this paper, a hybrid voltage control strategy composed of the preloading voltage, positive pulse voltage, holding voltage and negative pulse voltage is proposed to enhance the dynamic characteristics of the SCV, which makes it meet the demands of the digital hydraulics and achieve the end of replacing the HSV. Based on the structural analysis of the SCV, a mathematical model of the SCV is deduced. Subsequently, the simulation model of the SCV is developed in AMESim and validated by experimental measurements. The effects of the different duty ratios of the preloading voltage and holding voltage on the dynamic characteristics of SCV are studied, and the dynamic responses of the SCV under the normal voltage, positive and negative pulse and hybrid voltage control strategies are compared. The simulation results indicate that the increment of the preload voltage duty ratio and the reduction of the holding voltage duty ratio are conducive for decreasing the total opening and closing time of the SCV, especially the opening delay and closing delay time. The hybrid voltage control proposed has a better effect in dynamic characteristics than the other two strategies, using which the total opening time of the SCV reduces by 74.24% (from 29.5 ms to 7.60 ms), and the total closing time is drastically squeezed by 92.06% (from 136 ms to 10.8 ms). This provides a technical reference for improving the dynamic response speed of SCVs and popularizing digital hydraulic technology.

The hydraulic high-speed on/off valve (HSV)—the critical core component of digital hydraulic technology—has a special structural design and manufacture due to its fast opening and closing, which results in high prices and maintenance costs. The solenoid screw-in cartridge valve (SCV) is widely used in the hydraulic industry because of its merits, such as mature technology, reliable quality, and low cost. The contribution of this study is to replace the high-speed on/off valve with the SCV in some areas of application by introducing positive and negative pulse voltage control for the coil of the SCV, which only modifies the control circuit and needs no change in structure. Based on the analysis of the structure of the SCV, the simulation model was developed in AMESim and validated by experiments to investigate the effects of the pulse voltage duration on the open–close dynamic characteristics and find the optimal pulse voltage duration, so that the SCV can open or close in the shortest time to reduce energy loss as far as possible. The simulation results showed that the positive and negative pulse voltage could quicken the rising or declining speed of the coil current and dramatically decrease the opening and closing delay time. By the experimental comparison with the original control method, the opening time of the SCV decreased from 30 ms to 13 ms, and the closing time was reduced from 139 ms to 14 ms.

A wind generator equipped with hydraulic energy storage (WG‐HES) uses hydraulic transmission systems instead of gearbox transmissions, thus eliminating high‐power converters and reducing the tower‐top cabin weight. When there is no wind or the wind speed is extremely low, the pressured oil released by accumulators is used to drive a motor to operate at a constant speed, thereby generating constant‐frequency power. However, few studies have examined the constant speed control characteristics for generating electricity using only an accumulator group. In this study, a combined constant speed (CCS) proportional–integral–derivative (PID) control method based on “variable displacement and throttling” is proposed, which includes two closed loops and one regulating loop. First, a simulation model of the CCS PID control method for a variable motor was established in the Simcenter Amesim program. The influence of different PID parameters on the anti‐interference ability of the constant speed control of the motor was analyzed under a given load step. Then, we obtained the range of control parameter values and a set of optimal values. Second, the effectiveness of the CCS control method and the accuracy of the simulation results were verified on a 600‐kW WG‐HES system prototype. The results verified that the CCS control method has good anti‐interference ability and can meet the requirements of constant speed control for a variable motor under the best PID parameters. These results can provide a basis for developing control strategies for WG‐HESs when there is no wind or at low wind speeds.

In order to improve the efficiency and convenience of wind energy storage and solve the reproducibility of the hydraulic wind turbine, we present a storage type wind turbine with an innovative hybrid hydraulic transmission, which was adopted in the development of a 600 kW storage type wind turbine experimental platform. The whole hydraulic system of the storage type wind turbine is mainly an ingenious combination of a closed loop transmission and an open loop one, which can also be divided into three parts: hydraulic variable speed, hydraulic energy storage, power generation. For the study focusing on the capture and storage of wind energy, the mathematical model of the wind turbine except for the power generation was established under MATLAB/Simulink. A double closed loop control strategy is proposed to achieve the wind wheel speed regulation and wind energy storage. The dynamic simulations of the 600 kW storage type wind turbine experimental prototype were carried out under two different input signals. The results show that the wind wheel speed achieves the desired value at fast response and high precision using the control method given in this paper, and the proposed new storage type wind turbine is reasonable and practical.

In this paper, an innovative closed hydraulic wind turbine with an energy storage system is proposed. The hydraulic wind turbine consists of the wind rotor, the variable pump, the hydraulic bladder accumulator, the variable motor, and the synchronous generator. The wind energy captured by the wind rotor is converted into hydraulic energy by the variable pump, and then the hydraulic energy is transformed into electrical energy by the variable motor and generator. In order to overcome the fluctuation and intermittence shortcomings of wind power, the hydraulic bladder accumulator is used as an energy storage system in this system to store and release hydraulic energy. A double-loop speed control scheme is presented to allow the wind rotor to operate at optimal aerodynamic performance for different wind speeds and hold the motor speed at the synchronous speed to product constant frequency electrical power regardless of the changes of wind speed and load power. The parameter design and modeling of 600 kW hydraulic wind turbine are accomplished according to the Micon 600 kW wind turbine. Ultimately, time-domain simulations are completed to analyze the dynamic response of the hydraulic wind turbine under the step change conditions of wind speed, rotor speed input, and load power. The simulation results validate the efficiency of the hydraulic wind turbine and speed control scheme presented, moreover, they also show that the systems can achieve the automatic matching among turbine energy, accumulator energy, and generator output energy.