In this study, a spiral valve which is used with a cryogenic linear expander and composed of plural plate coil shapes was examined. Generally, a spiral valve is well known for having excellent efficiency and low noise characteristics. In order to determine the movement characteristics and to investigate the limit of valve displacement, the stress variations according to the changes of operating pressure, displacement and workable temperature are discussed. From this examination, it is considered that the results of this study will significantly facilitate the design and development of a spiral valve for the cryogenic linear expander.

A quick-acting hydraulic fuse, which is mainly composed of a poppet, a seat, and a spring, must be designed to minimize the leaked oil volume during fuse operation on a line rupture. The optimal design parameters of a quick-acting hydraulic fuse were searched using the design of experiments method and the complex method. First, the $L_{50}(5^4)$ orthogonal array is used to find the robust minimum point among the 625 points of design variables. The search range can then be narrowed around the robust minimum point. Second, the $L_{25}(5^4)$ orthogonal array is used to obtain the variations of the design variables in the narrowed search range. The variations of design variables are used to set the structure of a polynomial equation representing the leakage oil volume of the quick-acting hydraulic fuse. The least squares method is then applied to obtain the coefficients of polynomial equation. Finally, the complex method is used to find the optimal design parameters where the objective function is described by the polynomial equation.

Unlike a typical metal spring, a gas spring uses compressed gas contained in a cylinder and compressed by a piston to exert a force. A common application includes automobiles where gas spring are incorporated into the design of open struts that support the weight of tail gate. They are also used in furniture such as office chairs, and in medical and aerospace applications. The gas spring works by the application of pressurized gas (nitrogen) contained in a cylinder. The internal pressure of the gas spring greatly exceeds atmospheric pressure. This differential in pressure exists at any rod position and generates an outward force on the rod, making the gas spring extend. In this paper, we investigated the dynamic characteristics of a gas spring on an automotive tail gate system.

The accurate position control of pneumatic driving apparatus is considered in this paper. In pneumatically actuated positioning systems, accurate positioning as an electrical servo has been known to be difficult because of the friction force and compressibility of the air. For good control performance of the pneumatic system, an actuator mounted with externally pressurized air bearings is produced to compensate for friction force. For the controller design, the governing equation of the pneumatic driving apparatus is derived. In order to reduce the nonlinear characteristics of the control valve, linearized control input is derived from the relation between the effective area of the valve and the control input. The experimental results are presented to show the results of the improved position control of the pneumatic driving apparatus.

Because heavy-duty construction vehicles such as excavators are required for good engine-room cooling capacity, a hydraulic gear motor is adopted in the cooling fan drive mechanism to actively control the output speed, instead of adopting the conventional ON/OFF type belt drive. While gear motors are normally limited to 140bars of operating pressure, those for the cooling fan are capable of operating at continuous pressures of up to 220bars. After assembly, all gear motors for high pressure must pass an aging test which is a kind of the wearing process between the gear teeth and motor housing. During the aging process with gradual pressure increments, gear sticking sometimes occurs due to abnormal wear, resulting in defects. This paper focuses on a gear-sticking free aging test controller that is designed together with the knowledge of an experienced operator and the analysis results of experimental data of the gear jamming phenomenon. From the aging experiment, it is demonstrated that the developed controller that can alter the setting pressure of the load pump is effective for stabilizing the abrupt increase in the motor input pressure, thus preventing the hydraulic motor from stopping. This is expected to be helpful for the reduction of defects and increase in productivity.

A gas spring provides support force for lifting, positioning, lowering, and counterbalancing weights. It offers a wide range of reaction force with a flat force characteristic, simple mounting, compact size, speed controlled damping, and cushioned end motion. The most common usage is as a support on a horizontally hinged automotive tail gate. However, its versatility and ease of use has been applied in many other industrial applications ranging from office equipment to off-road vehicles. The cylinder of a gas spring is filled with compressed nitrogen gas, which is applied with equal pressure on both sides of the piston. The surface area of the rod side of the piston is smaller than the opposite side, producing a pushing force. The magnitude of the reaction force is determined by the cross-sectional area of the piston rod and the internal pressure inside the cylinder. The reaction force is influenced by many design parameters such as initial chamber volume, diameter ratio, etc. In this paper, we investigated the reaction force characteristics and carried out parameter sensitivity analysis for the design parameters of a gas spring.

Hydraulic manipulators have been widely used in many different fields due to their high force/torque to inertia ratio. The increased speed of hydraulic manipulators requires solutions to problems ranging from mechanical design to the need to determine a robot model suitable for model-based control. As a solution, this paper presents the integration of SolidWorks with Simscape for designing and controlling hydraulic manipulators. The integration provides a platform for the rapid control prototyping of a hydraulic robot without the need to build actual prototypes. The mechanical drawings of a manipulator are first created using Solidworks and are then imported into Simscape, where the manipulator is represented by connected block diagrams based on the principle of physical modeling. Simulation examples for a 3D manipulator made by KNR SYSTEM INC are verified to show the effectiveness of the presented platform.

This paper deals with the flow characteristics of a reed valve analyzed using computational dynamics(CFD) for optimal design. The seat sizes of the valve are modeled asØ6[mm] and Ø8[mm] to compare the flow characteristics. The inlet boundary condition is entered at 10[kPa], 15[kPa], 20[kPa], and 30[kPa] and the outlet boundary condition is set to the atmospheric pressure. The flow coefficient(C) and pressure loss coefficient(K) are calculated from the results of flow analysis. From the analysis results, it was confirmed that the flow coefficient of a reed valve having a seat size of Ø6[mm] is greater than that having a seat size of Ø8[mm], and the coefficient of pressure loss of a valve with a seat size of Ø6[mm] is lower than the Ø8[mm] size valve.

Due to the tendency to use high speed pneumatic cylinders to improve productivity, cushioning devices are adopted to decelerate the piston motion of pneumatic cylinders to reduce noise, vibration, and impact. This paper presents a comparison of the cushion characteristics of a high speed pneumatic cylinder with a relief valve type cushioning device. The system parameters selected are the damping coefficient, Coulomb friction, heat transfer coefficient, and cracking pressure of the relief valve in the air cushioning device. The integral of the time multiplied square error (ITSE) is used to quantitative measure the cushioning performance to assess the effect of varying these. The cushioning performance achieved good results when the ITSE is a minimum value. In a comparison of the piston displacement and velocity with the variations in system parameters, the heat transfer coefficients are not as significantly affected as the other. Also, the cracking pressure of the relief valve is mainly affected by the pressure and temperature in the cushion chamber.

A front-end loader (FEL) mounted on an agricultural tractor is one of the most commonly used implements for farm work. However, when the tractor carries material using the bucket attached to the FEL on a sloping ground, the materials can spill or roll back over the operator due to the tilted body, thereby requiring the bucket surface to remain level at a constant value regardless of varying slopes. In this study, an active system for controlling the angle of the FEL bucket on a tractor based on the real-time measurement of ground slopes was developed to enable the bucket to constantly remain level. A FEL simulator operated based on an electro hydraulic proportional valve (EHPV) was constructed in the laboratory to develop a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller forming a virtual electronic control unit (ECU) on the computer, which could automatically adjust the bucket angles depending on varying input angles while sending SAE-J1939 associated messages via CAN BUS to the EHPV. The different parameter values for the PID controller due to the gravity effect of the bucket were determined using a manual PID tuning method while assuming that the tractor travels on either an ascending slope or a descending slope. The developed PID control-based self-leveling system showed a mean of steady-state errors of within $1^{\circ}$ and a mean of delayed times of ~ 0.8s when the step input of $+20^{\circ}$ was given, implying that the developed system and control algorithm would be effective in maintaining the bucket angle at a certain value. Future studies include the improvement of the control algorithm to reduce such a time delay as well as the application of the developed algorithm to the FEL mounted on a tractor tested at a testing ground.

The therapy of injecting a fixed amount of a prescribed drug for a predetermined time is an effective treatment in relieving pain during anticancer treatments. Due to recent medical technology development, cancer is currently classified as a disease that can be managed in the patient's lifetime. If patients were able to use a drug delivery system that was portable, sustainable and had an accurate flow control, they would be able to inject medication whenever they need. In this study we developed a piezoelectric micropump for a drug delivery system by designing a pump chamber, check valve and diaphragm. We also developed a driving circuit that consumes low power and to which we applied a variety of signals. We fabricated a portable drug delivery system with this piezoelectric micropump and driving circuit. In addition, through a performance test, we confirmed that the system can precisely control the drug flow rate.

In general, the gears of mixer reducer for concrete mixer truck make use of the differential type planetary gear system to rotate mixer drum smoothly on the initial conditions. The planetary gear system is very important part of mixer reducer for concrete mixer truck because of strength problem. In the present study, calculating the gear specifications and analyzing the gear bending & compressive stresses of the differential planetary gear system for mixer reducer are necessary to analyze gear bending and compressive stresses confidently, for optimal design of the planetary gear system in respect to cost and reliability. As a result, analyzing actual gear bending and compressive stresses of the planetary gear system using Lewes & Hertz equation and verifying the calculated specifications of the planetary gear system, evaluate the results with the data of allowable bending and compressive stress from the Stress-No. of cycles curves of gears.