Priority-Based Supervisory Controller for a Displacement-Controlled Excavator With Pump Switching

Environmental and economic factors have driven the advancements in fluid power technologies over the last two decades. Gradual development has been made over time on the state-of-the-art fluid power technology; however, there has been no major advancement leading to radical improvement on systems’ efficiencies. Displacement-controlled (DC) actuation has been under investigation by the authors’ group since its conception in 1998 as a highly efficient alternative to its valve controlled counterpart, demonstrating fuel economy improvements of up to 40% and the possibility for engine downsizing of up to 50% for an excavator truck-loading cycle. Through the installation of a variable displacement hydraulic pump/motor per actuator, DC actuation entirely eliminates the losses due to resistive control and allows for the recuperation of energy from overriding loads. The one-pump-per-actuator requirement however represents the technology’s largest obstacle due to the increased machine production costs. For this reason the authors’ group proposed the idea of pump switching wherein a reduced number of hydraulic units is connected to the actuators in a multi-actuator machine through a distributing manifold. The idea relies on proper design of the distributing manifold and enabling controls to realize machine operability. Work by the authors’ group has demonstrated that the pump-switching idea is feasible on the actuator level, achieving seaming-less switching transitions while retaining the basic fuel savings demonstrated for DC actuation. This paper presents the first formal attempt to create a supervisory controller for a DC multi-actuator machine with pump switching. The controller is based on priority levels geared towards the maximization of the number of available actuator combinations. Implementation on a DC hydraulic hybrid excavator prototype show the feasibility of the control approach as well as the limitations and further improvements.