Power Drive Architectures for Industrial Hydraulic Axes: Energy-Efficiency-Based Comparative Analysis

In hydraulic systems, energy dissipation can be significant. The pressure losses that can occur in the hydraulic circuit, which are influenced by the adopted drive architecture, result in power consumption that is often significantly higher than that required by the mechanical system. This paper presents a comparative study of the energy efficiency of five common drive architectures in industrial hydraulic axes. The analysis is applied to a variable speed and force hydraulic blanking press, a fairly common industrial system, e.g., in the manufacture of semi-finished brass products. Standard, regenerative, high–low, variable-displacement pumps and variable speed drive configurations for a fixed-displacement pump were analyzed and compared. In each case, an appropriate and optimized sizing of the different components of the system was performed, and then the energy consumption was estimated for a load cycle common to all the considered cases. The results show that the choice of the power generation architecture of the hydraulic system has a very significant impact on the energy efficiency and consequently on the operating costs and the carbon footprint. The performed quantification of the potential energy efficiency of the considered drive architectures can be very useful in helping to make energy-conscious decisions.