Characteristic Matrices and Conceptual Design of Hydraulic Systems

The paper presents a new conceptual design method that is capable of generating large numbers of possible design concepts of hydraulic systems automatically for specified operation requirements. A hydraulic system is regarded as a set of single-action subsystems and each subsystem is formed by a set of basic transformation units representing hydraulic components and their usage patterns. The input and output energy characteristic states of a subsystem or basic transformation unit are represented by qualitative vectors related by a diagonal characteristic matrix. Each element of the matrix defines a simple transformation and the operation rules of these transformations are defined. The subsystem characteristic matrix is the product of the characteristic matrices of the basic transformation units. The characteristic matrices of all basic transformation units are identified and classified and the decomposition rules for subsystem characteristic matrices are established. Thus, the characteristic matrix of a subsystem can be successively decomposed into various sets of characteristic matrices of basic transformation units. Each set of such basic transformation units is the topological representation of a hydraulic system. By successive decomposition of a system characteristic matrix, a thorough conceptual design process for hydraulic systems is established. The proposed method is illustrated by examples.