Direct Position Control of Electro-Hydraulic Excavator

Position measurement in the electro-hydraulic systems is feasible via the utilization of physical sensors. An improvement in technology has led to the manufacturing of high accurate position sensors for direct position control. This paper proposes utilization of direct position control in an electro-hydraulic system with a new hydraulic zonal system architecture implemented with Direct Driven Hydraulics. It was mentioned in early study that this hydraulic system architecture as a replacement for the traditional valve-based hydraulic systems, has higher energy efficiency rate. In this study, the simulation implementation and experimental verification of Direct Driven Hydraulics (DDH) will be investigated for a micro excavator test case from position control point of view. Results demonstrated that the implementation of DDH in an excavator case will lead to maximum 5 cm error in a single-cycle movement.