A NOVEL, COMPACT PULSATION COMPENSATOR TO

REDUCE PRESSURE PULSATIONS IN HYDRAULIC

SYSTEMS

JOSEF MIKOTA
Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Institute of Mechanics and Machine Design,
Altenbergerstr. 69, A-4040 Linz, Austria.
Email mikota@mechatronik.uni-linz.ac.at.

Fluid borne noise is a problem in hydraulics. Besides conventional devices for the
attenuation of the effects of fluid flow pulsations, such as accumulators, λ/4 line
silencers, λ/4 side-branch resonators and Helmholtz resonators, passive solid body
compensators appear to be a promising alternative, especially for the attenuation
of fairly high frequency noise. Although most of these devices are rather simple,
there are a number of problems preventing a practical utilisation in real-world
hydraulic systems. In this paper, a novel device for the attenuation of the effects
of fluid flow pulsations will be presented. The theoretical description of the device
will be supplemented by a simulation study and experimental results.

1 Introduction

Positive displacement pumps and motors, as well as the utilisation of discon-

tinuous control elements9 , such as fast switching valves, create significant flow-
and pressure pulsations in hydraulic circuits1 . These unpleasant effects may
lead to excessive (acoustic) noise, compromised actuator dynamics or even to
fatigue problems of components. Common measures to improve the situation
include the utilisation of positive displacement machines with a high number
of working elements, or result in the application of “conventional” noise at-
tenuation devices, such as accumulators, λ/4 line silencers, λ/4 side branch
resonators, Helmholtz resonators or novel multiple-volume resonators 5 .
However, quite frequently conventional devices have one or more of the
following shortcomings:
• complex or expensive design (e.g. devices based on conventional mass-
spring systems)
• bulky design (e.g. λ/4 resonators)
• no simple method to tune the resonance frequency
• unsystematic parameter selection (i.e. for accumulators the relevant pa-
rameters are volume and pre-charge pressure) → experimental work is
required (selection by trial and error )

Copyright AML, Uni Linz — 19/09/2001 1

 • low attenuation performance

Although the application of vibration compensators based on simple mass-

spring systems should deliver good attenuation7 , two questions regarding a
practical implementation need to be addressed:

1. What sort of spring would be suitable and how big would it have to be
to withstand the static pressure?

2. Is there a cheap and robust way of frequency tuning?

In this contribution a novel vibration absorber featuring an adjustable

hydraulic spring will be investigated. After a theoretical description of the
device and a simulation study, experimental results will be provided to prove
the usefulness of the concept.

2 Proposed concept

Since the concept of vibration compensation is widely known and well under-
stood (e.g. Inman4 or Hung3 ), only little effort will be made in this contribu-
tion to explain the fundamentals of vibration compensation. In the following
section, a description of the working principle of the proposed device will be
presented.

2.1 Working principle

0
1
2

Figure 1. Schematics: Proposed pulsation compensator

 The device depicted in Fig. 1 is connected to the main hydraulic system
(1). The working piston (3) with mass m is excited by the pressure pulsation
p(t) in the main system. Furthermore, the working piston seals off (e.g. by
a gap seal between (3) and the housing (0)) the hydraulic volume (2) – also
called the hydraulic spring – from the main system (1) and permits only
the (slow) balancing of the mean pressures between (1) and (2). In order
to keep the working piston (3) in a centred position after the mean pressure
compensation, two springs (4) are used. However, in most practical cases the
stiffness of these springs may be neglected from the dynamics point of view.
Due to the pressure pulsation in the main system or the excitation force
F (t) = (p(t) − pHS (t)) AP (1)
respectively, the piston (3) is accelerated and a displacement x(t) of the piston
(3) occurs. In effect, this yields to an increased pressure pHS in the hydraulic
spring (2).
This system represents a resonator with mass m (the mass of the working
piston (3)), stiffness cHS (due to the stiffness of the hydraulic spring (2))
BT0 ot A2P
cHS = (2)
VHS
and damping d due to the shear stresses in the fluid and leakage, where B T0 ot
represents the combined bulk modulus of hydraulic oil considering the flex-
ibility of the surrounding enclosure, AP represents the area of the working
piston and VHS represents the oil volume in the hydraulic spring.
As known in the literature, a properly tuned resonator called the vibration
compensator may be used to greatly attenuate the effects of an excitation of
the primary system if the frequency of excitation Ω is close to the natural
frequency ω of the vibration compensator. In our case, the excitation is
given by the flow pulsation, the vibration compensator is represented by the
presented device and the primary system is the main hydraulic system.
Assuming that the working piston is centred by two springs with stiff-
ness cCS and neglecting their masses, the natural frequency of the vibration
compensator is given as
r
cHS + 2 cCS
ω= . (3)
m
The natural frequency of the compensator may be modified by either
changing the volume VHS of the hydraulic spring (2) in a discrete (see
Fig. 2(a)) or continuous (see Fig. 2(b)) manner, or by the utilisation of an
additional (mechanical) spring with adjustable spring stiffness.
 (a) Discrete adjustment

3 2

SV2

4
SV1

D1

(b) Continuous adjustment

Figure 2. Principles of frequency tuning

3 Experimental investigation

Based on the working principle presented in section 2.1, a prototype was built
featuring a (nominal) resonance frequency of fRes = 140 Hz (see Tab. 1 for
design parameters).
 Table 1. Design parameters of prototype

BT0 ot ≈ 12500 bar Combined bulk modulusa

dP 29.98 mm Diameter of working piston
Hydraulic VHS 0.4 l Volume VHS
spring Resulting stiffness of hydr.
→ cHS 1.56 106 N/m
spring
Centring Stiffness of one centring
cCS 12000 N/m
spring spring
Mass m 1.962 kg Mass of working piston
lGap 10 mm Length of sealing gap
Gap seal Sealing gap measured at
ηGap 12 µm
the diameter

3.1 Experimental setup

In order to specify the attenuation performance of the prototype, an exper-
imental setup depicted in Fig. 3 was used. In this setup, the flow pulsation
was generated by the switching of a servo-valve (MOOG D760-995A, super
high response type, cutoff frequency fCutOf f = 350 Hz) between a high pres-
sure side with pSys = 160 bar and a tank side. Between the servo-valve and
the compensator, a hydraulic line with length l = 250 mm and an internal
diameter of d = 12 mm was used. This type of line, apart from a length of
l = 300 mm was also used to connect the compensator to the load, which
was represented by an adjustable orifice. After the adjustable orifice, a cavity
with a volume of V = 0.75 l was used to reduce pressure pulsations in the
tank line.
The servo-valve was excited electrically using a displacement signal
s(t) = s0 + ŝ cos(ωt), (4)
whereby the excitation frequency f = ω/(2π) was varied in the range between
10 and 300 Hz using a step width of 10 Hz. The resulting pressure pulsation
p(t) in the main hydraulic system was detected using a pressure transducer
(KULITE 34345, pN om = 160 bar and fCutof f = 800 Hz). Additionally, the
supply pressure pSys and the pressure pHS in the hydraulic spring were de-
tected. According to Beranek et al.2 , the insertion loss of a pulsation damper
a The combined bulk modulus BT0 ot (see Backe1 ) considers the compressibility of the hy-
draulic fluid and the flexibility of the enclosure. Depending on the design of casing enclosing
the hydraulic spring, this value may be considerably different from the compression modulus
of the hydraulic fluid BOil .
 u Line Line
p Sys l = 250 mm DUT l = 300 mm
d = 12 mm d = 12 mm
p Sys
p
u

Moog D760-995A
Super High Response p HS
fGrenz = 350 Hz
u

Figure 3. Schematics: Experimental setup

is specified as
µ ¶
pi F F T
Lpi = 20 log , (5)
pi RefF F T

where piF F T denotes the amplitude of the pressure pulsation in a system

with active damper and pi RefF F T denotes the amplitude in a system without
damper evaluated at the frequency fi .
Due to the non-linearity of the system behaviourb , frequencies different
from the excitation frequency were found in the steady state response of the
system. In order to end up with the correct insertion loss Lpi at a specific
frequency fi , the values piF F T and pi RefF F T represent the amplitudes in the
spectrum of the pressures signals pi and pi Ref at frequency fi after performing
a FFT analysis.

3.2 Attenuation performance

The insertion loss of the prototype is depicted in Fig. 5. As can be seen in this
figure, the pressure pulsation in the main hydraulic system may be attenuated
by up to −30 dB, where the attenuation range with f ∈ [10 220] Hz is rather
broad.

4 Simulation study

In addition to the experimental investigation of the device, a simulation study

was conducted using MATLAB (see Mathworks6 ). The model depicted in
Fig. 4 features a 3/3 servo-valve, a simple hydraulic line (represented by a
hydraulic resistance, inductance and capacity – with an additional volume
b Thisis mainly due to the non-linear flow characteristics of the servo-valve, especially over-
or underlap
representing the connection block) and an orifice. The design parameters of
the simulation model are listed in Tab. 2.

O u t1

M A T L A B
E x c ita tio n F u n c tio n
u [1 ] x V e n t [1 ]
O r ific e
1 6 0 p P [b a r ] Q P [l/m in ]
x V a lv e
p S y s p T [b a r ] Q T [l/m in ]
p 1
p A [b a r ] Q A [l/m in ] Q 1 [l/m in ] Q 2 [l/m in ]
p
0 p 2 [b a r ] p 1 [b a r ]
3 /3 S e r v o - v a lv e
S im p le lin e
C o n s ta n t1
( w ith b lo c k )

x ' [m /s ] A K
x '
- K - F [N ] x [m ]
A P is to n 3
p K [b a r ]
A P is to n 2
C o m p e n s a to r

Figure 4. Simulation model

Table 2. Simulation parameters representing the prototype

fCutOf f ≈ 350 Hz Cut-off frequency

Servo valve QN om 20 l/min Nominal flow
∆pN om 35 bar Pressure drop at QN om
l 0.55 m Length
d 12 mm Internal diameter
Hydraulic
Additional volume
line
VAdd 0.06 l (represents connection
block)
QN om 1.5 l/min Nominal flow
Orifice
∆pN om 145 bar Pressure drop at QN om
AP 707 mm2 Piston area
m 1.962 kg Piston mass
Stiffness of centring
cSpring 24000 N/m
springs
Combined bulk modu-
lus of the hydraulic fluid
Compensator BT0 ot 12500 bar
considering the flexibil-
ity of the enclosure
Volume of the hydraulic
VHS 0.4 l
spring
Dimensionless damping
ζ 0.03
ratio of piston motion

As can be seen in the comparison between experimental data and sim-

ulation results (using the combined compression modulus BT0 ot ) depicted in
Fig. 5, the behaviour of the prototype may be fairly well described by the
simple simulation model given in this section.
1 5

E x p e r im e n ta l d a ta
1 0 S im u la tio n r e s u lts

0
5 0 1 0 0 1 5 0 2 0 0 2 5 0 3 0 0

-5
In s e r tio n lo s s [d B ]

-1 0

-1 5

-2 0

-2 5

-3 0

-3 5
F re q u e n c y [H z ]

Figure 5. Insertion loss of prototype

5 Conclusions

In this paper of novel device for the attenuation of the effects of fluid flow
pulsations was presented. The device works according to the principles of vi-
bration compensation and utilises an amazingly simple hydraulic spring which,
apart from other advantages, allows a mean pressure compensation between
the main hydraulic system and the hydraulic volume (2).
The concept is mainly characterised by

• compact design

• cheap production costs

• simple frequency tuning

• its suitability for all pressure levels

• good pressure pulsation attenuation performance

 On May, 4th 2001 a patent application was made at the Austrian patent
office8 for the pulsation attenuator described in this paper.

Nomenclature
A Area m2
B Bulk modulus N/m2
c Spring stiffness N/m
N
d Damping ratio m/s
η Sealing gap m
f Frequency Hz
F Force N
l Length m
L Logarithmic measure of noise attenuation dB
m Mass kg
p Pressure Pa
Q Volume flow m3 /s
V Volume m3
ω Angular frequency rad/s
x Displacement m
ζ Dimensionless damping ratio –

References

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fluid power, transmission and control, RWTH Aachen, 10 edition, 1994.
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3. J.B. Hunt. Dynamic vibration absorbers. Mechanical Engineering Publi-
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