Characteristics of volumetric losses and efficiency of axial piston pump with respect to displacement conditions

A good efficiency performance of a pump over a wide range of displacement conditions is crucially important for variable pump control systems to save energy. However, according to the literature, less attention has been paid to the understanding of the efficiency, leakage flow, and compression flow characteristics of the pump with respect to displacement conditions. In this study, a test bench was built, and a novel explicit volumetric loss model was proposed to investigate these problems. The overall efficiency is found to drop considerably with the decreasing displacement. The volumetric losses range from 13% to 47% of the total power losses of pump at the rated speed, under the conditions of pressure ranging from 5 to 35 MPa and displacement ranging from 13% to 100% of full displacement. The highest proportion of compression flow losses in the total volumetric losses of pump at the rated speed can reach up to 41% when the pressure and displacement are greater than 30 MPa and 88% of full displacement, respectively; after that, the proportion gradually decreases with decreasing displacement. However, the leakage flow generally increases with decreasing displacement, or may decrease first and begin to increase after the minimum with the further decrease of displacement. In the components of leakage of slipper/swash plate pair, the squeeze leakage is found to reach a magnitude equal to that of the Poiseuille leakage. The findings can guide the further research and design of pumps with better efficiency performance.