Water hydraulic high-speed solenoid valve Part 1: Development and static behaviour

Abstract

This study is concerned with the development of a novel water hydraulic high-speed solenoid valve with a two-stage mechanism. By virtue of the two-stage mechanism and the proposed particular design, which use the leakage flow through the clearance between the main poppet and sleeve as the internal pilot flow, it is possible for the developed valve to have unique features, such as no internal leakage, a switching time of approximately 2 ms, maximum flowrate of 9 1/min and maximum pressure of 14 MPa. Based on the preliminary experimental results using a fabricated prototype valve, the performance of the developed valve has been improved. It can be seen from the experiment that the static flow characteristic according to the duty ratio of the improved valve is very satisfactory. As an application of the developed valve, the speed control of a water hydraulic motor has been conducted using the pulse width modulated (PWM) control of the developed valve. It was found that the developed valve is suitable for the PWM control method and can be implemented as the flow control valve of water hydraulic systems.