Advanced contact engineering for high-performance fluid water lubricated and powered hydraulic motors

Project duration

2013 - 2015

Project Category

SLO

Contact Information

prof. dr. Mitjan Kalin

The objective of the proposed project is to develop a high-quality, durable, water-hydraulic motor that will be a technologically and commercially successful product in the global market. Such hydraulic motor is new in the field of water hydraulics; its major advantage is in the protection of the natural environment and drinking water.

Nowadays, about 85 % of hydraulic systems use mineral hydraulic oil as the hydraulic liquid. These hydraulic systems provide exceptional exactness and efficiency during operation. They work at high pressures (up to 450 bar, some of them even up to 750 bar), with high flows (even up to thousands of litres per minute), at exceptional working frequencies (some hundreds Hz), and ensuring a long useful lifetime at the same time.

Yet oil as a hydraulic liquid, in spite of many technical advantages, has some disadvantages, e.g., a relatively high price and ecological problems. The latter is becoming more and more important as man tries, moreover through legislation on numerous fields and domains, to protect the environment against pollution.

In recent years man has tried to substitute mineral or synthetic hydraulic oil with other solutions that are suitable for the environment.

The proposed project will be presented in four sections:

1.Modelling of the tribological sliding surfaces and their optimization, analysis and optimization of the flow channels and ''dynamic'' flow slots, etc.

2.Model tribological tests.

3.The real scale tests of the hydraulic motor using a water hydraulic test rig with different parameters.

4.A validation test.