This paper presents optimization of a pneumatic control system whose design parameters have been optimized so that the desired dynamic characteristics of cylinder position was obtained. The pneumatic system is used as transferring and stacking equipment for solid freeform fabrication system which has been widely used in design verification applications. The pneumatic system mainly consists of pneumatic control valves and cylinders. The system was modeled by using several principles for pneumatic components. The system was optimized to obtain dynamic performance with enough damping to reduce cylinder vibration. A fuzzy controller has been applied to fulfill the dynamic performance requirements of the pneumatic system. The simulation results show that the fuzzy controller is more effective than a PD controller.

This paper presents modeling and ostimator/controller design for the hydraulic system in Vehicle Stability Control(VSC) system. A nonlinear mathematical model of the VSC hydraulic system is proposed and its accuracy is experimentally verified. A brake pressure estimator is then designed based on the derived mathematical model of VSC hydraulic system. And a disturbance observer, which compensates the estimation error between the brake pressure and the computed brake pressure is also designed to enhance the accuracy of the estimator. The proposed controller has the form of a feedback controller and determines explicitly the on/off ratio of valves' driving PWM signals by means of making use of the simplified mathematical model in the VSC hydraulic system. The performance of the designed controller whose feedback signal is generated by the brake pressure estimator is validated through experimental results.

The safety factor of hydraulic piston pumps & motors due to high pressurization, high speedization and low weight/volume realization to enhance the output density shows a tendency to decrease. Therefore more effective test methods are necessary to predict the exact life. The failure of hydraulic pumps & motors operating in high pressure and high speed mainly occurs in piston-shoe assemblies, and the major failure mode is wearout of the shoe surface. The sensitive parameters in the endurance life test are speed, pressure and temperature, and the failure production increases in proportion to the operating time. In this research, the authors propose the combined accelerated life test model using the analysis method of the combined accelerated life test results of piston-shoe assemblies by applying simultaneously high speed, high pressure and high temperature in accordance with variation of speed, pressure and temperature to reduce the life test time.

In order to improve the efficiency of hydraulic gear pumps or motors especially for high operating pressure, power losses due to viscous friction and leak flow through gear teeth end-gaps are considered in this paper. Optimal gaps minimizing the power loss for pumps and motors with uniform heights of gaps are analysed first. And the effect of the shapes of gaps with unequal heights on the power loss are studied and discussed by simulation. Considering that the outer shell lacing gear teeth may expand due to high internal pressure or thermal stress, the results drawn in this paper can be used for the design of high efficiency pumps and motors.