Zhu Yuquan

Lubrication and tribology in seawater hydraulic piston pump

Water hydraulic systems have provoked major interest because of the human friendly and environmental safety aspects. Piston pump is one of the most frequently used hydraulic units in recent engineering technique. In water hydraulic piston pump, poor lubrication is more likely to happen than in oil hydraulic one because of difference in properties between water and oil. So there are some key problems such as corrosive wear and erosion, which are investigated briefly. Many new materials have been developed, which give longer life expectancies with water without corrosion and erosion. A new type of seawater hydraulic piston pumps with better suction characteristics had been developed at HUST. Much of this research has concentrated on new materials, structure and experiments, which are also specially introduced.

Flow and cavitation characteristics of a damping orifice in water hydraulics

Abstract The flow in damping orifices when using water as the working media is of high Reynolds number and cavitation is inevitable. In this article, experimental studies are made on the flow and cavitation characteristics of water hydraulic orifices and the coefficient formulae in previous documents are testified with the Reynolds number ranging from 104 to 105. All the orifices are made of transparent materials, so the flow and the occurrence process of the cavitation can be observed with the naked eye. The experiments for each orifice are carried out under the two cases with and without backpressure, respectively. Experimental results show that the flow coefficient with backpressure is larger than the case without it. The larger the aspect ratio, the less the flow characteristics are influenced by backpressure. The cavitation first occurs at the inlet of orifices and then shifts to the outlet gradually. When there is cavitation happening at the outlet, flow saturation emerges simultaneously.

Study of the key problems in a water hydraulic piston pump and its applications

In recent years water hydraulic systems have become of major interest because of the human friendly and environmental safety aspects. The piston pump is one of the most frequently used hydraulic units in recent engineering techniques. In a water hydraulic piston pump, poor lubrication is more likely to happen than in a oil hydraulic one because of differences in properties between water and oil. There are some key problems, such as corrosive wear and erosion, which are briefly investigated in this paper. Many new materials have been developed, which give longer life expectancies in water without corrosion and erosion. Recently, a new type of seawater hydraulic piston pump with better suction characteristics had been developed at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Much of this research has concentrated on new materials, structure and experiments, which are also specially introduced in this paper.

New approach of suppressing cavitation in water hydraulic components

Cavitation frequently appears in high pressure water hydraulic components and leads to serious hydraulic erosions and horrible hydrodynamic noises. In this paper, a novel approach of suppressing cavitation was proposed, inducing the outlet pressure back to the orifice to improve the pressure distribution of throttle valves. In order to realize this approach, an optimized throttle valve chamber structure was designed. After that, the anticavitation performance of the valve was investigated. A theoretical cavitation cloud model was built based on bubble dynamics. In order to solve the mathematic cavitation model, the velocity field and pressure distribution of the novel throttle valve were simulated through Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD). Combining the simulation results, the mathematic cavitation cloud model was solved through numerical calculations. Moreover, new indexes estimating cavitation intensity were proposed scientifically to investigate cavitation phenomenon. Then, the comparison of the novel throttle valve (with an innovative valve chamber) and traditional throttle valve in anticavitation performance was conducted under different conditions. Finally, the experiment about anticavitation performance was completed on the test rig. The calculation and experiment results indicated that the approach, inducing the outlet pressure back to the orifice, was effective in suppressing cavitation.