Novel Integrated Active and Passive Control of Fluid-Borne Noise in Hydraulic Systems

Abstract

Fluid-borne noise (FBN) is a major contributor to structure-borne noise (SBN) and air-borne noise (ABN) in hydraulic fluid power systems and could lead to increased fatigue in system components. FBN is caused by the unsteady flow generated by pumps and motors and propagates through the system resulting in SBN and ABN. New hydraulic technologies such as digital switched hydraulic converters are also barriered by the unavoidable FBN. This article reports on a novel integrated FBN attenuation approach, which employs a hybrid control system by integrating an active feedforward noise attenuator with passive tuned flexible hoses. The active system which consists of adaptive notch filters using a variable step-size filtered-X Least Mean Squares algorithm is used to control a newly designed high-force high-bandwidth piezo-electric actuator in order to attenuate the dominant narrowband pressure ripples. The passive hose is tuned in the frequency domain and used to cancel the high-frequency pressure ripples. A time-domain hose model considering coupling of longitudinal wall and fluid waves was used to model the flexible hose in the integrated control system. Very good FBN cancelation was achieved by using the proposed integrated control approach both in simulation and experiments. It can be concluded that the active attenuator with passive flexible hoses can form an effective, cost-efficient and practical solution for FBN attenuation. The problem of high noise levels generated by hydraulically powered machines has risen significantly in awareness within industry and amongst the general public, and this work constitutes an important contribution to the sustainable development of low noise hydraulic fluid power machines.