Churning Losses Evaluation in Swashplate Axial Piston Pump using Moving Particle Approach

Abstract

In axial piston units, churning losses have a non-negligible influence on mechanical efficiency.
This work presents a numerical approach for the evaluation of the churning losses in a swashplate axial piston pump for closed circuit applications using the MPS (Moving Particle Semi-implicit) software Particleworks.
Taking advantages of experimental activities and theoretical results derived by different authors [1,2,3], a sensitivity analysis is carried out in order to evaluate the influence of the numerical parameters involved in the simulation. In particular, the effects of the particle size, the slip factor applied to the wall boundaries and the turbulence model are analyzed. In this framework, reduction of particle size clearly shows the convergence of the churning losses toward the expected value. The paper also demonstrates that when the reduction of particle size is not affordable due to computational time and resources, the same torque results can be obtained with a coarser particle size, by increasing the slip factor, that affects the viscous forces on the walls. The use of the turbulence model has instead a lower impact on the churning losses prediction with respect to particle size and slip factor.

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