Although current state of the art hydraulic variable displacement pumps are highly efficiently at high displacement, they have poor efficiency at low displacement. Besides, different operating speed and load pressure conditions also strongly affect their performance. This paper proposed a novel alternating flow (AF) hydraulic variable displacement pump to 1) eliminate throttling loss by acting as a high-bandwidth pump for displacement control, 2) achieve high efficiency across a wide range of operating conditions and displacements, and 3) allow multiple units to be easily common-shaft mounted for a compact multi-actuator displacement control system from a single prime-mover. This paper presents a simple closed form model for the AF hydraulic pump and shows the model validation with a first generation prototype. The simple closed form model captures input motor energy, output fluid energy and associated energy losses. With the closed form model validated, it can then be used to drive optimal design for future generation prototypes using a dimensionless group method.

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