Abstract

This paper reports a study of electrohydraulic valve function programmability and characteristic interchangeability using a set of individually controlled cartridge type electrohydraulic (E/H) control valves. Such an integrated individually controllable E/H valve is defined as the programmable E/H control valve. A hybrid control algorithm was developed to realize different valve functions via programmable logic and to realize different interchangeable valve characteristics via a programmable valve modulation function. Evaluation test results verified that the programmable E/H control valve was capable of replacing different types of conventional proportional control valves and, more importantly, capable of realizing the flow regeneration function. The programmability of the programmable E/H control valve provides the flexibility of using the same firmware of an E/H control valve on various applications by simply downloading different control software.

Keywords: programmable E/H control valve, valve function programmability, valve characteristics interchangeability, flexible control software