STUDY ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF WATER HYDRAULIC FLUID SWITCHING TRANSMISSION

Water hydraulic fluid switching transmission (FST) has lower environmental load and lower energy loss in valves for using only ON/OFF valves. In addition, improvement of transmission efficiency can be expected by using accumulator as the second driving source and making use of waste energy by energy recovering action. This paper concerned with experimental results and a design of simulator of the FST system. First, it was shown from experimental results that the error rate was within 5 percent and the recovered energy during the deceleration phase was more than 25-38% of the kinetic energy of the load. Next, the FST simulator was developed for designing the key parameters to achieve higher transmission efficiency. As a result, the effects of design parameters of FST system were clarified and design standard of water hydraulic FST was established.