Novel Integrated Control of Fluid-Borne Noise in Hydraulic Systems

The noise in hydraulic machines presents itself as fluid-borne noise (FBN), structure-borne noise (SBN) and air-borne noise (ABN). FBN is caused by the unsteady flow produced by pumps and motors or the operation of digital hydraulics, and propagates through the system causing SBN, which in turn causes ABN. 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 passive hoses are tuned to cancel the high-frequency pressure pulsations, whilst the active controller is designed to attenuate the dominant harmonic ripples. Adaptive notch filters with a variable step-size filtered-X Least Mean Square algorithm were applied in the new designed active piezoelectric actuator with high preload and operating forces, a wide bandwidth and very good linear dynamics. A time-domain hose model considering coupling of longitudinal wall and fluid waves was used to model and tune the flexible hose. Very good FBN cancellation was achieved by using the proposed integrated control approach, which was validated by comparing with numerical 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. As the problem of high noise levels generated by hydraulically powered machines has risen significantly in awareness amongst industry and the general public, this work constitutes an important contribution to the sustainable development of low noise hydraulic fluid power machines.