Applying a multi-service digital displacement® pump to an excavator to reduce valve losses

Reducing the energy consumption of off-highway machinery due to poor system efficiency is an urgent challenge. Several advanced and innovative architectures have been proposed over the years to tackle this problem, but very few of them found fertile ground for commercial applications due to increased complexity and cost. In this paper, the design, implementation, and testing of a multi-service Digital Displacement ® Pump architecture applied to an excavator are presented. The Digital Displacement ® Pump allows for a dynamic physical displacement allocation to services at different pressure levels, thus reducing throttling losses required to operate multiple actuators simultaneously. A feed-forward control logic is implemented and applied to the system using a closed-centre architecture. The results indicate a fuel reduction of more than 30% compared to the baseline excavator.