Flow Control for a Two-Stage Proportional Valve with Hydraulic Position Feedback

Abstract The current research mainly focuses on the flow control for the two-stage proportional valve with hydraulic position feedback which is named as Valvistor valve. Essentially, the Valvistor valve is a proportional throttle valve and the flow fluctuates with the change of load pressure. The flow fluctuation severely restricts the application of the Valvistor valve. In this paper, a novel flow control method the Valvistor valve is provided to suppress the flow fluctuation and develop a high performance proportional flow valve. The mathematical model of this valve is established and linearized. Fuzzy proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is adopted in the closed-loop flow control system. The feedback is obtained by the flow inference with back-propagation neural network (BPNN) based on the spool displacement in the pilot stage and the pressure differential across the main orifice. The results show that inference with BPNN can obtain the flow data fast and accurately. With the flow control method, the flow can keep at the set point when the pressure differential across the main orifice changes. The flow control method is effective and the Valvistor valve changes from proportional throttle valve to proportional flow valve. For the developed proportional flow valve, the settling time of the flow is very short when the load pressure changes abruptly. The performances of hysteresis, linearity and bandwidth are in a high range. The linear mathematical model can be verified and the assumptions in the system modeling is reasonable.