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Research on Characteristics and Key Design Parameters of a Pilot-Assisted Load Control

Valve

Article  in  Applied Mechanics and Materials · March 2014

DOI: 10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.541-542.1203

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Tianjin University
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 Various study on load control valve has been done, however, former researches mainly focus on
simulation of a certain type of hydraulic circuit employing a load control valve. Not much experiment
work has been done about load control valves. Some researchers have set up the test rig and have done
some experiment investigations on a type of load control valve [6]. But the load control valve is
specially used in hydraulic winch. As concluded in [7], the use of load control valve is application
sensitive. It is a fact that except for some real-crane test [3], no comprehensive experiment research
has been done about load control valves used in crane booming hydraulic system. While the design of
real-crane tests has a lot of constraints such as safety considerations which makes it hard to have a
total test of the load control valve. Thus, this research aims at developing a test rig for the load control
valve used in crane booming hydraulic system and studying the characteristics of the load control
valve through laboratory experiments.
This paper is organized as follows: First introduce the mobile crane booming hydraulic system
employing the investigated load control valve. Second the modeling of the load control valve is
described. Next the setup of the test rig is presented and the experiment results are given. Then the
model verification of the valve is described. Further simulation results about the effect of the key
design parameters on the load control valve are also presented. The paper ends with conclusions of the
research.

Considered system and investigated valve

Main
boom

M Load
Booming
cylinder

B
Counterbalance valve
MB
Main MX
valve Reducing
valve
X
Pressure
relief valve

MA A L

Joystick

A1 B1
K1 K2

P T Directional control valve

Main Make-up Check

pump pump valve

Fig. 1 crane booming hydraulic system circuit

employing the investigated load control valve

Fig. 1 shows the crane booming hydraulic system circuit employing the investigated load control
valve. The main components are a main pump to supply the pressure oil to lift the load, a joy stick to
give the pilot pressure oil, a directional control valve to control the moving direction of the load, a
load control valve to hold the load and to control the lowering speed, a hydraulic cylinder to which the
load control valve is directly mounted, a make-up pump to supply the oil to the cylinder rod chamber
when needed and a check valve to maintain a certain low pressure of the rod chamber.
It is clearly shown in Fig. 1 that the load control valve is a combination of a pilot throttle valve to
control the speed when lowering the load, a check valve for oil to go through when lifting the load and
a pressure relief valve which only opens in case of high pressure peak.
When booming down the load, the joystick gives pressure oil to both the K2 pilot port of the
directional control valve and the X pilot port of the load control valve. As a result, the flow channel
from A1 to B of the directional valve opens and the main valve of the load control valve opens
proportionally to the pilot pressure, allowing the oil of the non-rod chamber of the booming cylinder
goes from B to A and finally back to the tank. Thus the lowering speed of the load is controlled by the
load control valve proportionally to the pilot pressure given by the input of the joystick.

Modeling of the load control valve

A cross sectional schematic of the main parts of the investigated load control valve is presented in
Fig. 2. The investigated load control valve is a two stage pilot valve using the follower principle of the
pilot spool and main spool. The pilot operated main valve and the bypass check valve are combined in
one axis and this structure makes a very compact assembly.
Control Feedback Compression
Pilot piston orifice Pilot spool orifice 2 spring

Ap
X Ar A1 A2 A3

A B
Control Feedback Chamber D Main spool Compensation Chamber C
spring orifice 1 orifice
Fig. 2 cross section schematic of the main parts of the investigated load control valve

According to the structure of the investigated load control valve, the dynamic equations of the
moving parts can be obtained employing Newton’s second law. The dynamics of the pilot piston is
given by Eq. 1:

d 2 x pp
m pp  p X Ap  Fcns  kcns x pp  F  f pp (1)
dt 2

In Eq. 1, mpp is the mass of pilot piston, xpp is the displacement of pilot piston, is pilot pressure, is
the initial compression force of the control spring, is the stiffness of the control spring, is the
interacting force between pilot piston and pilot spool and is the coulomb friction force acted on pilot
piston.
The dynamics of the pilot spool is shown by Eq. 2:

d 2 x ps
m ps  F  pD A1  Fcms  kcms x ps  pC ( A1  Ar )  f pm (2)
dt 2
 Where, mps is the mass of pilot spool, xps is the displacement of pilot spool, pD is the pressure of
chamber D as preferred in Fig. 2, Fcms is the initial compression force of compression spring, kcms is
the stiffness of compression spring, pC is the pressure of chamber C and fpm is the coulomb friction
force between pilot spool and main spool.
The dynamics of the main spool is described by Eq. 3:

d 2 xms
mms  pB A3  p A ( A1  A2  A3 )  f pm  pC A2  pD A1  f ms (3)
dt 2

Where, mms is the mass of main spool, xms is the displacement of main spool, pB is the pressure of
port B, pA is the pressure of port A and fms is the coulomb friction force acted on the main spool by the
valve seat.
According to the flow continuity Eq. of sealed chamber, the pressure differential Eq.s are achieved.
The pressure differential Eq. of chamber C is shown by Eq. 4:

dpC Ee  dx ps dx 
 QF 2  QC   A1  Ar   A2 ms  (4)
dt VC  dt dt 

In Eq. (4), Ee is the effective modulus of the hydraulic oil, VC is the volume of chamber C, QF2 is
the flow rate through feedback orifice 2 and QC is the flow rate through the compensation orifice.
The pressure differential Eq. of chamber D is shown by Eq. 5:

dpD Ee  dxms dx ps 
 QC  QF 1  A1 (  ) (5)
dt VD  dt dt 

Where, QF1 is the flow rate through feedback orifice 1.

According to the Bernoulli Eq., the flow rate of the orifices can be developed. The calculation of
the flow rate of the feedback orifice 1 is given in Eq. 6:

2( pD  pA )
QF 1  cAF 1 (6)


The calculation of the flow rate of the feedback orifice 2 is described in Eq. 7:

2( pB  pC )
QF 2  cAF 2 (7)


The calculation of the flow rate of the compensation orifice is illustrated by Eq. 8:

2( pC  pD )
QC  cAC (8)


Eq. 9 describes the calculation of the flow rate of the control orifice:

2( pB  pA )
QM  cAM (9)

 For Eq. 6, Eq. 7 and Eq. 9, the flow areas A1, AF2 and AM are all obtained by flow field simulation
using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software package FLUENT. The flow area AC in Eq. 8 is
constant.
According to the governing Eq. 1 ~ Eq. 9, the simulation model of the load control valve is
developed in the modeling environment software package AMESim® (Advanced Modeling
Environment for performing Simulations of engineering systems).

Test rig setup

To make a comprehensive experiment research on the load control valve, a test rig is designed and
set up specially. The test rig layout is shown in Fig. 3. The main purpose of the test rig is to test the
valve’s performance with different load pressure and a certain pilot pressure, the behavior due to
different pilot pressure at a certain load pressure and the load pressure step response.

pressure transducer
B
counterbalane valve

A L MX X
manual directional
valve

flow meter
directional
cartridge valve
valve

proportional
reducing valve
directional
valve

hydroelectical
relief valve
NI 6251
Amplifier
DAQ Card

Main Pilot
pump pump

Fig. 3 the test rig system schematic

Experimental results and model verification

Fig. 4 shows the experiment data of the flow rate variation with pilot pressure, the experiment is
conducted at a constant load pressure 5 MPa. The simulation result and the experiment data show a
good agreement and both results indicate a good performance of the load control valve. When the
valve starts to open, it has a relatively low proportion between flow rate and pilot pressure, which
ensures the valve open smoothly; In the interval from 1.3 MPa to 1.9 MPa of the pilot pressure, there
is nearly a proportional relationship between flowrate and pilot pressure which gives the load control
valve a good flow rate control ability.
 experiment data
140 60
experiment data simulation result
120 simulation result 50
Flow rate (L/min)

Flow rate (L/min)

100
40
80
30
60
20
40
20 10

0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Pilot pressure (MPa) Load pressure (MPa)
Fig. 4 flow rate variation due to pilot pressure, load Fig. 5 flow rate variation with load pressure, pilot
pressure keeps at 5 MPa pressure keeps at 1.4 MPa

Fig. 5 illustrates the experiment data of the flow rate variation with the change of load pressure, the
experiment is conducted at constant pilot pressure 1.4MPa. The simulation results and the experiment
data show a good agreement and we can see an obvious compensation of the load pressure. A
compensation of the load pressure means when the load pressure is above 10 MPa, as the load
pressure increases, the flow rate through the valve decreases instead of increases. In the application of
crane, as the crane booms down, the load pressure becomes higher because the structural parameters
change during the lowering process, thus the compensation of the load pressure prevents possible load
crash during the lowering.
Fig. 6 displays the experiment data of a 5 MPa load pressure step response of the load control valve.
The 5 MPa load pressure is conducted during the time of 2s to 6s. There is no flowrate overshoot with
a load pressure step which means the valve has a good ability of preventing possible oscillation of the
system.

experiment data
100
simulation result
Flow rate (L/min)

80

60

40

20

0
0 2 4 6 8 10
Time (s)
Fig. 6 flow rate response of a 5 MPa load pressure step, no overshoot occurs

Study on key design parameters of the valve

One key parameter of the counterbalance is the area ratio λ which is defined by Eq. 10. The area
ratio affects the opening pilot pressure of the load control valve.

Ap
 (10)
Ar

During the opening process, the pilot piston and the pilot spool move together. The pressure in
chamber C and D all equals to the load pressure. So let
 d 2 x pp d 2 x ps
 0 (11)
dt 2 dt 2

And let

x pp  x ps  0 (12)

At the same time,

pC  pD  pB (13)

The pressure PXO can be derived from Eq.1 , Eq.2, Eq.11, Eq.12 and Eq.13, the result is as follows:

Fcns  Fcms  f pp  f pm
pXO  pB   (14)
Ap
In Eq. 14, a linear relationship between opening pressure and the area ratio, as well as the load
pressure is illustrated clearly. The simulation result of the opening pressure of different area ratio and
load pressure is shown in Fig. 7.

10
Opening pressure (MPa)

Spool displacement (mm)

1.6 area ratio = 70 9 pilot spool

area ratio = 100 8
1.4 main spool
area ratio = 140 7
1.2 6
5
1.0
4
0.8 3
2
0.6
1
0.4 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28
Load pressure (MPa) Load pressure (MPa)
Fig. 7 openning pressurer with different area ratios and Fig. 8 the displacement of pilot spool and main spool
load pressure with different load pressure

A main characteristic of the load control valve is the follower principle of the pilot spool and the
main spool. The simulation results of the displacement of the pilot spool and main spool are
illustrated in Fig. 8. The displacement difference between the pilot spool and the main spool is about
2.5 mm and varies little with different load pressure.

2
AC=1.13mm
2
300 AC=1.54mm
2
AC=2.01mm
250
Flow rate (L/min)

200

150

100

50

0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Load pressure (MPa)
Fig. 9 simulation result of how diffrent compensation
areas affect the compensation function of the valve
 Another key parameter of the valve is the compensation orifice area , which affects how much the
compensation of the load pressure appears. The simulation results of the effect of three different
compensation areas on the compensation function are shown in Fig. 9. It comes to a conclusion that
the compensation function is more obvious as the compensation orifice area becomes smaller.

Summary
A simulation model of the load control valve is established based on AMESim, besides, a test rig is
specially designed to study the performance of the load control valve. Experiments are conducted on
the valve’s behavior due to different load pressure at a certain pilot pressure, the behavior due to
different pilot pressure at a certain load pressure and the load pressure step response. Experiment
results show the valve has good flow rate control ability and a good ability to prevent oscillation. The
simulation results and experiment data agree well which allows further study on the valve by
simulation. It is concluded that the opening pressure has a linear relationship with both the area ratio
and the load pressure. The follower principle of the pilot spool and the main spool is also simulated,
and it comes to a conclusion that they have a displacement difference of about 2.5 mm constant and
varies little with different load pressure. Concerning the effect of the compensation orifice area, it can
be concluded that the smaller the compensation area changes, the more obvious the compensation
function becomes.

Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge the support of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant
No.:51275451), Science Fund for Creative Research Groups of National Natural Science Foundation
of China (Grant No.:51221004), Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (973
Program) (Grant No.: 2013CB035400), and National Sci-Tech Support Plan of China (Grant
No.:2011BAK03B09).

References
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actuated cranes using sequential activation of counterbalance Valves, 12th International Conference
on Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS), IEEE, Jeju Island, Korea (2012), p. 773-778.
[2] M.M. Rahman, J.L. Porteiro, and S.T. Weber, Numerical simulation and animation of oscillating
turbulent flow in a counterbalance valve, Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, 1997.
IECEC-97., Proceedings of the 32nd Intersociety, IEEE (1997), p. 1525-1530.
[3] H. Xie, and G. Zhang, Research on characteristics of the piloted follow-up load control valve in
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Mechatronics Automation (ICMTMA), IEEE (2013), p. 887-892.
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[5] M.R. Hansen, and T.O. Andersen, Performance of Mobile Cranes Using Pressure Feedback, 2001
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