How do you design hydraulic circuits that are safe, reliable, and easy to troubleshoot?

Start with a clear and well-documented design that includes labeled components & a comprehensive diagram. Integrate safety features such as pressure relief valves to prevent overloading Consider modular design principles, breaking the system into manageable sections. This makes troubleshooting more straightforward as we can isolate and test individual components. Implement clear visual indicators, like pressure gauges and flow meters, to facilitate monitoring Choose high-quality components and materials to enhance reliability. Regular maintenance schedules are crucial, including fluid checks and replacement, to prevent issues before they arise. Providing detailed docum. & training for maintenance personnel ensures efficient troubleshooting.

Designing hydraulic circuits that are safe, reliable, and easy to troubleshoot requires a careful balance of creativity and precision. The key lies in understanding the principles of fluid dynamics to create a system that efficiently transfers power while minimizing the risk of leaks or other malfunctions. Each component must be carefully selected and installed with meticulous attention to detail, ensuring seamless integration into the overall circuit design. Safety mechanisms such as pressure relief valves and check valves help protect against overpressure situations, while filters and strainers keep contaminants at bay.

First and foremost, all three factors have to be stated as design objectives. Most hydraulic systems are inherently unsafe by design. Moreover, the design from a maintenance and testing/troubleshooting point of view is so poor that critical maintenance procedures are ignored, and it’s quicker to replace a component than it is to test it. The root causes of the problem stem from several factors: 1. Universities don’t teach safe design practices. 2. It’s impossible for engineers to design safe a maintenance/TS friendly hydraulic systems because most have done neither. 3. Respectfully, many engineers are arrogant. Consequently, they refuse to seek/heed valuable input from mechanics because they are “uneducated.” It’s a no win situation.

I agree with the approach. I find it is also important to survey the existing solutions for similar applications, and trying to add incremental improvements, instead of re-inventing the wheel.

The basis or concept of the hydraulic circuit must be safe, simple, versatile and efficient, considering all aspects and technical variables for safe, precise, and efficient operation, achieving an optimal cost-operability relationship, including cutting-edge technologies. Creativity, ingenuity, and expertise are going to be key to achieving a practical and innovative design.

In choosing the components, one should always find the right compromise between several (and always conflicting) specifications. Sometimes, I found that components that looked to have similar performance (on paper) would prove to have different behavior or reliability.

Selecting the correct and appropriate components for the design of the hydraulic circuit will require a lot of experience and, above all, being up to date with the advances in hydraulic systems, from hose terminals / connections with adequate threads, more flexible hoses and with a greater range of pressure, multifunction valves, calibrated pressure gauges and accessories that do not affect the system pressure, and above all, focus the design on simplicity, using the smallest number of components possible, obtaining efficient results, remember Murphy's law which says: The greater the number of components, the greater the probability of failure.

The way people make hydraulic schemes could be more professional. To start with, there is an ISO STANDARD that should be followed. Unfortunately, it looks like many OEMs are entirely unaware of this simple fact and take their approach to it, resulting in schemes that are not only difficult to read but sometimes also plainly wrong. Moreover, it also happens that modifications made to the machines during their production life are not recorded on the schemes, thus making the lives of the maintenance people very hard (and dangerous!)

Troubleshooting is nothing more than identifying “suspect” components based on the “chief complaint” and executing tests on the “suspect” components to determine if they are causing or contributing to the problem. Regrettably, poor design makes it so difficult to test most hydraulic components that it’s more time efficient to replace the components than it is to test them. The problem is so pervasive throughout the world that it begs the question: do engineers collaborate with marketing and make a conscience decision to make poor design a marketing directive to increase lucrative spare parts sales? It certainly seems that way to me. I welcome a debate on my comments.

I completely agree. But I also see that the simulation and testing of hydraulic systems is rare in small and medium OEMs. Unfortunately.

A safe design must start by defining the safety level or performance level (PL) per SIL or ISO 13849-1 for a selected function. The required PL will affect the hydraulic diagram and selected components. It is of great importance to define the PL at an early stage of the design in order to prevent late design modifications.

The priorities of the hydraulic circuit design concept must be safety, versatility, efficiency, and low cost, but it is very important not to forget that the design must provide for easy maintenance and replacement of components, which we often see in the work field, equipment that has to be almost dismantled to change a simple hose or a control valve, let us be ingenious and innovative with each design and project where we are professionally involved.

Moin aus meiner Erfahrung rate ich immer dazu eine Leistungsreserve von 20 % mit einzurechnen. In der Regel mach ich es so das ich den ben?tigten Systemdruck so gering ansetze das ich mit einfachen M?glichkeiten den Systemdruck erh?hen kann. Ohne alles zu überlasten. Hat meinen Kunden schon oft viel Geld gespart. Mit freundlichen Grü?en Jens B?ttcher