• Journal of Drive and Control
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.91-100
• /
• 2018

This study focuses on the energy saving of construction machinery, especially excavators and wheel loaders coming on a backdrop of energy shortage and environment pollution. Due to the problem of the low energy efficiency and the pollution of conventional hydraulic excavators, hybrid hydraulic excavators were developed to solve this challenge. Firstly, this paper discusses the different configurations of the hybrid hydraulic excavator and recent research trend of hybrid hydraulic excavator is reviewed. Secondly, the productions and research of the construction machine companies were analyzed and finally, the future challenges of hybrid technology to the hydraulic excavator were discussed.

• Transactions of The Korea Fluid Power Systems Society
• /
• v.6 no.4
• /
• pp.1-8
• /
• 2009

Nowadays with the high fuel prices, the demands for energy saving and green emission of construction machinery have highly been increased without sacrifice of working performance, safety and reliability. The aim of this paper is to propose a new energy saving hybrid excavator system using an electro-hydraulic actuator driven by an electric motor/generator for the regeneration of potential energy. A 5 ton class excavator is analyzed, developed with the boom for the evaluation of the designed system. The hardware implementation is also presented in this paper. A control strategy for the hybrid excavator is proposed to operate the machine with a highest efficiency. The energy saving ability of the proposed excavator is clearly verified through simulation and experimental results in comparison with a conventional hydraulic excavator.

• Journal of Drive and Control
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.39-45
• /
• 2014

With recent oil price increases, the fuel efficiency of hydraulic excavators has become a serious issue. Researchers have considered weight lightening by high pressurization in order to improve the efficiency of the excavator and pump controlled actuation (PCA) and to reduce pressure loss of hybrid and valves using mechanical inertia. However, high pressurization is not very effective because the excavator operates at a low speed; a hybrid is inefficient because little accumulated inertial energy is accumulated; and PCA is ineffective because control precision and responsibility are low. In this study, a method to minimize air and gas in hydraulic oil has been presented as a simple and new way to increase hydraulic efficiency.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.37 no.11
• /
• pp.1407-1413
• /
• 2013

The swing motion drive unit of a hybrid excavator is composed of an electrical motor instead of a hydraulic motor that is used in hydraulic excavators. The method to assess and guarantee the reliability of a hybrid excavator should consider combining the mechanical and the electrical failure mode effects. In particular, the swing reduction gear set of a hybrid excavator is operated under severe outdoor conditions; therefore, an accelerated life test, which is based on field operating condition, should be conducted for the newly developed reduction gear set. In this study, various qualitative methods for reliability engineering, such as FMMA, FMECA, FTA, and QFD, were used to develop the accelerated life test method for the swing drive reduction gear set for the hybrid excavator.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.29 no.12
• /
• pp.1304-1312
• /
• 2012

According to the successful development of hybrid vehicle, hybridization of construction equipments like excavator, wheel loader, and backhoe etc., is gaining increasing attention. However, hybridization of excavator and commercial vehicle is very different. Therefore a specialized energy management control algorithm for excavator should be developed. In this paper, hybridization of excavators is investigated and a new energy management control algorithm is proposed. Four control parameters, i.e., lower baseline, upper baseline, idling generation speed, and idling generation torque, are newly introduced and a new operating principle using those four control parameters is proposed. The use of Genetic Algorithm for the optimization of the four control parameters from the view point of minimization of fuel consumption for standard excavating operation is suggested. In order to verify the proposed algorithm, dedicated simulation program of hybrid excavator was developed. The proposed algorithm is applied to a specific hydraulic excavator and 20.7% improvement of fuel consumption is achieved.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2008.11a
• /
• pp.801-805
• /
• 2008

Today, hydraulic systems play an important role in modern industry for the reasons that hydraulic actuator systems take many advantages over other technologies with high durability and the ability to produce large forces at high speeds. In recent years, electro-hydraulic actuator systems, which combine electric and hydraulic technology into a compact unit, have been adapted to a wide variety of force, speed and torque requirements. Moreover these systems resolve energy consumption and noise problems characteristic existed in the conventional hydraulic systems. Therefore, these systems have a wide range application fields especially in an excavator. So the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate efficiency of the energy saving and present some control algorithms which apply to electro-hydraulic actuator system in the bucket of the excavator. Experiments are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system with various external loads as in real working conditions.

• Journal of Drive and Control
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.22-26
• /
• 2006

• Journal of Drive and Control
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.45-53
• /
• 2019

The objective of this study was to design and model the PEM fuel cell excavator with supercapacitor/battery hybrid power source to increase efficiency as well as eliminate greenhouse gas emission. With this configuration, the system can get rid of the internal combustion engine, which has a low efficiency and high emission. For the analysis and simulation, the governing equations of the PEM system, the supercapacitor and battery were derived. These simulations were performed in MATLAB/Simulink environment. The hydraulic modeling of the excavator was also presented, and its model implemented in AMESim and studied. The whole system model was built in a co-simulation environment, which is a combination of MATLAB/Simulink and AMESim software. The simulation results were presented to show the performance of the system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.35 no.12
• /
• pp.1537-1542
• /
• 2011

This paper presents the power management strategies for a compound hybrid excavator. The compound hybrid excavator has been replaced the hydraulic swing motor to the electric swing motor. This excavator requires a proper control algorithm to regulate the energy flow between the mechanical coupling and the electric devices. The controller should improve fuel economy and maintain the super capacitor voltage within a proper range. A thermostat controller and ECMS controller are designed such that these objectives can be achieved. The thermostat controller regulates the power of the engine-assist motor on the basis of the super capacitor voltage, and the ECMS controller determines it using the real-time fuel minimization strategy based on the concept of equivalent fuel. Simulation results showed that by using the hybrid excavator, the fuel economy becomes about 20% higher than that obtained using the conventional excavator and that the ECMS controller outperforms the thermostat controller.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.39 no.2
• /
• pp.211-217
• /
• 2015

Emission gas regulations and constantly increasing fuel costs call for the worldwide use of environmentally friendly and energy-efficient machines in industry. To meet these requirements, a hybrid excavator prototype has been developed that incorporates an electric swing motor, engine assist motor, and ultra-capacitor module into a conventional hydraulic excavator of the 22-ton class. This paper mainly describes a few techniques to optimize its energy efficiency. These include 1) controlling the engine speed in proportion to the load torque, 2) controlling the pump displacement when driving the electric swing system, 3) managing the ultra-capacitor voltage to minimize the electrical energy loss, and 4) reducing the cooling fan speed to improve the energy efficiency of the system.