Operational Fault Diagnosis in Industrial Hydraulic Systems Through Modeling The Internal Leakage of its Components

In this study, a model of a high pressure hydraulic system was developed using the bond graph method to investigate the effect of the internal leakage of its main components (pump, cylinder and 4/2 way valve) on the operational characteristics of the system under various loads. All the main aspects of the hydraulic circuit (like the internal leakages, the compressibility of the fluid, the hydraulic pressure drop, the inertia of moving masses and the friction of the spool) were taken into consideration. The results of this modeling were compared with the experimental data taken from the literature and from an actual test platform installed in the laboratory. Modeling and experimental data curves correlate very well in form, magnitude and response times for all the system’s main parameters. This proves that the present method can be used to accurately model the response and operation of hydraulic systems and can thus be used for operational fault diagnosis in many cases, especially in simulating fault scenarios when the defective component is not obvious. This is very important in industrial production systems where unpredictable shutdowns of the hydraulic machinery have a considerable negative economic impact on cost.