In a hydraulic system, employment of counterbalance valve introduces sizable energy consumption. In addition, a pressure-feedback control architecture with inflexible parameters causes instability under time-varying negative loads. As an alternative, an adjustable meter-out orifice was adopted, and a stable controller was proposed in this study. By combining inlet pressure and velocity, the concept of a flow rate follower was developed. Mathematical analysis of dynamic model illustrated that both the inlet pressure and velocity converged to a range related to the flow rate follower bounds. Feedback linearization with robust control was utilized such that flow rate follower converged in the presence of parametric uncertainties; meanwhile, a high-gain load observer was constructed for disturbance compensation. The effectiveness of the controller was verified by experiments and its performance discussed. As a result, the inlet pressure was held near a specified low value, thus significantly reducing energy consumption. Also, the velocity matched the supply flow rate, and the oscillations were acceptable in applications.

In hydraulic systems under negative loads, counterbalance valves are widely employed, which introduce instability and sizable energy consumption. This article focuses on the electrohydraulic system with meter-out orifice and variable pump, which allows flexible control structure. The target is to reduce inlet pressure level as well as diminish oscillation caused by time-varying loads. An extended load observer is constructed to estimate the external load. Accordingly, a robust back-stepping controller with integral part and disturbance compensation is proposed to regulate the meter-out orifice, achieving velocity-oriented control. Also, a model-based pressure-oriented controller is developed to determine pump displacement. The target is set to 3 bar in this work, while the pressure losses in conventional systems are more than 12 bar. The stabilities of these two independent controllers are both proved by Lyapunov theory. Experiments focusing on energy consumption, load compensation, and velocity tracking are carried out verifying the controller effectiveness. Discussions of results illustrate that the whole proposed controller succeeds in velocity tracking and reducing energy consumption in the presence of time-varying negative load.

Traditionally, counterbalance valve (CBV) is widely used to counterbalance negative load of fluid power machinery. CBV introduces extra energy consumption and oscillation to hydraulic system especially for time varying system. The essence of its shortcoming is the inflexibility of the control architecture. In this article, a proportional orifice is adopted to counterbalance negative load, which makes the control strategy flexible. A load observer is proposed to demonstrate the load dynamically. A control algorithm based on back-stepping design is proposed in this paper afterwards, aiming at keeping the inlet chamber pressure of the actuator around a fairy small value. The control error is estimated, as well. A simulation for the process of the excavator booming down is carried out to verify the observer and control algorithm, which proves the energy-saving target achieved.