Pneumatic driving systems have hard non-linear characteristic and large friction force compared with driving power. Hence, it cannot be robust against parameter uncertainties, modelling error, disturbance and noise. In this study, we apply a mixed $H_2/H_{\infty}$ control to the generalized plant for a pneumatic driving apparatus system including parameter uncertainty and disturbance. In order to design the $H_2/H_{\infty}$ controller, we use the LMI technique. To evaluate control performance and robust stability of the designed controller, we compare it with a conventional controller such as PVA(Position-Velocity-Acceleration state controller) using the simulation results. As a result, it can be known that designed controller shows better robust stability than the conventional controller.

ISO pneumatic cylinder reliability test requires air leakage measurement. Air cylinder has many parts and the leakage shall be measured before, during and after endurance test, and, the leakage should smaller than the specified value. The existing measurement method needs complex operation and the calibration of leak detector, and, has to separate the testing cylinder from endurance test device, which causes the change of contact condition of seal in the cylinder. Therefore, it is hard to evaluate the air leakage during endurance test, and guarantee the reliability of the conventional measurement method. In this paper, a new method for air leakage measurement using isothermal chamber, which does not requires calibration or temperature compensation, and, can measure air leakage accurately with quite simple operations, is proposed. As a result, reliability of air leakage measurement can be improved because the proposed method does not have to separate the testing cylinder from the endurance test device for air leakage measurement. The effectiveness of the proposed method is proved by error analysis of leak measurement from experimental result.

The typical hydraulic system of hoist is composed of a hydraulic supply unit, a directional control valve, counter balance valve, and flow control valves. The flow capacity coefficients of flow control valves should be adjusted so that the hoist is operated at moderate speed and the hydraulic energy loss is minimized. However, it is difficult to adjust the flow coefficients of flow control valves by trial and error for optimal operation. Here, the steady state model of the hoist hydraulic system including the differential cylinder circuit is derived and the optimal flow capacity coefficients of flow control valves are obtained using the complex method that is one kind of constrained direct search method.

Various types of hydraulic shock absorbers are widely used in many fields because of its numerous advantages. However, in order to design adequate damping characteristics, accurate flow data near the orifices are required essentially. In this paper, a commercial computational fluid dynamics(CFD) code, FLUENT is adopted to investigate the flow characteristics near orifices of a shock absorber. Static pressure and velocity vector distributions, fluid path lines are presented for compression/tension strokes and various piston speeds. In order to validate the result of analysis, the numerically obtained damping forces are compared with those of analytical estimations obtained by modified Bernoulli equation. The results reported herein will provide better understanding of the detailed flow fields within shock absorber, and the CFD analysis method proposed in this paper can be used in the design of other types of hydraulic shock absorber.