Motion Control

By JACK L. JOHNSON, P. E.

Introducing the millennium pump ne of the realities of fluid power in in order to link up to the network. In O the future is that more of it will be pursuit of that aim, let us consider a ack Johnson is an electrohycontrolled with electronics. There are pump architecture that is bus-ready J draulic specialist, fluid power two broad methods of control in hy- and in the process, expose at least some engineering consultant, and presidraulic fluid power: valve control and pump control. In this context, the valve and the pump are the elements that connect the controlling electronics to the hydraulic system. Factors too numerous to mention make electronics the control medium of choice, but one that must be reckoned with is the rush to wire the world with communication buses. More will be written about buses in subsequent issues. For now, however, let it suffice that the ability for inanimate devices to freely communicate with one another is so compelling, and the advantages are so enormous, that the bus juggernaut cannot be stopped. Two-way communication via bus allows centralized data-gatherers to interrogate the status of the system literally from anywhere in the world. Each instrument or device on the network can broadcast its presence and essential characteristics to any other instrument, controller, or data-gatherer. From an engineering and system design point of view, the enormous amount of information available will make initial startups of systems and even whole factories go much faster. And the same devices that are integral to the control system will broadcast diagnostic data that will either tell explicitly or be used to derive the general health of both devices and components. The fluid power industry is just beginning to embrace this exciting new bus technology. The purpose of the discussion to follow is to review the challenges confronting our mature industry of the more important problems and vexing issues. The aim here is not to provide all the answers, but rather, to start a dialog by asking some of the right questions at least from my perspective. Readers are encouraged to contribute, too, because there are many difficult decisions that must be made. Many of you are going through that process right now. But fear not, you are not alone. Our standardswriting bodies will have a big role to play, too, because the issue of which bus will emerge as the ultimate winner in the bus wars is by no means settled. This makes our job all the more difficult. CAN may be all but settled in the mobile equipment arena, but in the industrial arena, the battle continues to rage, and big fortunes are at stake. Pump control vs. valve control The use of valves to control hydraulic actuators is inherently inefficient, but pump control of actuators is very efficient. In spite of this reality, there are ample reasons why valve control is preferred. Primarily, valves can respond much faster than pumps can. Therefore, the most demanding applications those requiring both rapid response and accuracy in controlling position, speed, pressure, force, or any combination of these must use valves. Pumps do not have sufficient bandwidth to accomplish these tasks. This statement is not meant to imply that pumps cannot be used as a means of control; they are well-suited for many applications. Furthermore, I hope nium pump, take a detailed look at the features and operation of the millennium pump, and address issues surrounding sensors used for monitoring pressure, speed, torque, temperature, and displacement in the millennium pump. dent of IDAS Engineering, East Troy, Wis. Contact him at 262/6427021, fax 262/642-7025, e-mail idaseng@aol.com, or visit his web site at www.idaseng.is4.com. that someday pumps will be developed that will indeed produce real bandwidths of 10 Hz or more. The changes taking place in industry, and those that will take place, reflect the need for the very best pumps that can be designed and built. In the text that follows, Ill try to describe the pump of the future that is needed to meet industrial demands of this, the new millennium. Advantage of pump control The main advantage of using a pump as the control element is that pumps can regenerate power, whereas valves cannot. For example, during the acceleration of a load mass or inertia, the pump displacement is increased, motivating the actuator to run at a higher speed. This transfers energy from the pump, through the actuator, and into the load. Upon deceleration, pump displacement is reduced, and the actuator pressure undergoes sign reversal. Essentially, the actuator then becomes a pump, taking energy from the load. The pressure reversal causes the pump to become a motor, overdriving the prime mover. With an electric motor as the prime mover, it becomes a generator and puts power back onto the electrical grid to be used by other electrical consumers. Thus, power is not consumed during deceleration, but, rather, is regenerated, and put back into the electrical power bus. This technology has been highly developed by those dedicated to electrical actuation. It will be exploited by them against fluid power until pump control is made more responsive and cost effective in more applications. Now, contrast this with valve control. Upon acceleration, the valve
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Whats coming up
This series of columns on motion control begins with an introduction to the theoretical hydraulic pump of the future the millennium pump. Subsequent installments will cover serial bus technology and how it relates to the millen-

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opens, allowing power to transfer from the pump to the actuator and load. Upon a signal to decelerate, the valve reduces its opening, causing a large pressure drop at the same time that there is flow. The resulting pressureflow product is power, which is dissipated in the valve lands by heating the fluid, and all the energy of deceleration is converted to heat and lost. Yes, valves can be very responsive in terms of changing flow direction and speed, but they cannot regenerate power. Universal pump prototypes The universal, electronically controlled, variable-displacement pump will serve as the prototype for the rest of this discussion. The pump is shown in analytical schematic form in the figure at right. This is the basic configuration that will be used increasingly in all applications of hydraulic machinery in the future. But a word of explanation is in order in view of the earlier comments regarding valve versus pump

C A

D Pump kernel

The variable-displacement pump of the future will use sensors and microprocessors for electronic control rather than the fluid logic control used in todays pumps.

control. The interface between the hydraulic circuit and the electronic circuit can be only a valve or a pump. In reality, it is always done with a valve, even in the case of pump control. This interface occurs at the signal level, not power level. The device that accepts the electrical signal and produces a hydraulic reaction will be one of those two power devices.
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Now, back to the pump. The conventional pressure-compensated pump uses internal pressure-sensing pistons, springs, and spools. The energy output of the pump itself effects a reduction in displacement as pressure rises above the compensators cracking pressure. Hydromechanical logic is used to establish the rate of displacement change and its sensitivity to the output-pressure change. This has led to the use of intricate spools, poppets, sleeves, and other hydromechanical pieces that are expensive and difficult to develop. The resulting machines represent well-developed technology and provide users with a variety of reliable pressure-compensated pumps with an even greater variety of performance characteristics. Pumps of the future will use a universal prototype as the kernel, and the logic to control them will be increasingly relegated to the computer or some kind of so-called intelligent controller. There are several reasons why this can be expected: Requirements for the small, intricate parts that are used in the hydromechanical sensing and controlling will be all but eliminated, replaced by the small parts for the displacement variators for the kernel pump. The degree of control will be improved. Specific performance characteristics will be easily modifiable merely by entering a different parameter, say loop gain, as a digital input parameter. Initial design will be expedited, because it is far easier to tune an electrohydraulic controller than it is to produce spools, poppets, and springs in almost endless combinations to achieve a specific response. Anyone who has tuned an electronic controller may disagree that it is easier; however, the process must be put into context. In the case of conventional hydromechanically regulated pumps, all the tuning is done by sizing the spools and sleeves and poppets and springs during product development in the laboratory which can take weeks, if not months. In the case of the electronic pump, the tuning is done at application time,
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and even novices can fumble their way to acceptable tuning in a few hours or maybe days. And the important fact is that the electronic pump will be tuned to application conditions, not laboratory conditions. In the end, the net tuning time will be reduced for the electronic pump. Electronic compensation methods are available that will allow refinement of the pump responses, especially when considering the tendency of some hydromechanical pumps to go unstable under certain loading conditions. Variations on integral control will make it possible to provide an electronically controlled, pressure-compensated pump with essentially perfect steady-state pressure control. That is, the output pressure will not have to change with changing load flow. The deadhead pressure will be the same as the average running pressure. More sensors will be necessary in the system of the 21st century, but their added cost will be more than offset by the advantages derived from them. The greatest advantage will be that all the hydromechanical parts for a pressurecompensated pump will be the same as those for, say, a load-sensing pump. The only difference between these two machines will be in the control software. In fact, the control program for each machine will be loaded into the control computer, and the operator will select the pump of choice based on the application circumstances at that instant. Once the software has been developed, the cost to reproduce it will be almost trivial. Compare this to the cost of producing thousands of identical precision-manufactured parts for hundreds of identical pumps. A manufacturers ability to standardize on all the mechanical parts will result in substantial price reductions in products. Now, anyone who has suffered the pains of developing software knows that this can accrue a significant expense. Software development is a technical specialty, and the quality of the control program will determine the ultimate degree of success of the millennium pump in the application. Debugging can be particularly frustrating to the uninitiated, because it is usually only the programmer who can understand how easy it is to write in the bugs, how difficult they can be to locate, and
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how challenging the corrections can be. This is especially true when a committee is specifying the final performance of the machine, but only one programmer is writing the code. Most control-software programmers do not have the luxury of redundancy that designers do. A checker typically reviews each and every dimension and line drawn by the original designer before mechanical drawings are finalized. Programmers often work alone. And because most lack lack intimate quantitative fluid power skills, they are inclined to blame the hardware when a system behaves unacceptably. Of course, the hydraulic engineers are prone to blame the software. The real problem, most often, is on the system level. Simulation and real-time control Learning simulation and mathematical modeling is an excellent preparation for developing programs for realtime control. Real-time control refers to the process where the computer program is written to execute with sufficient speed so that its calculations and logic always stay ahead of the machine it is controlling. It involves, among other things, the use of techniques that not only result in very efficient (fast executing) code, but also synchronize the program with the controlled machine. Such is the purpose of wait loops, polling of input devices, and software and hardware interrupts. In the industrial seminars I conduct, control programmers often attend who need engineering details of servo and proportionally controlled systems. More often than not, they are electrical engineers with programming experience, which provides them with a good background for modeling of hydraulic systems. Unfortunately, there are enough differences between electric and hydraulic circuits to make the quantitative choices difficult for one who is not specifically schooled in the art of digitally controlled hydraulic machinery. It should almost be a prerequisite that anyone responsible for writing real-time control software to have developed a competence in simulation.
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