HYDRAULIC FIELD TEST RIG AND EVALUATING PLANT OIL PERFORMANCE

Abstract

environmental friendly hydraulic fluid has a major influence in ecologically benign environment. This future type of oil should be non-toxic, biodegradable and ecological benign. Subsequently, it becomes crucial to recognize the sustainability of such oil in maintaining a high system performance which resulting in tremendous contribution towards machinery technology. Furthermore, the development of methods to evaluate the actual performance of hydraulic fluid has been of great interest. In this project a hydraulic test rig which incorporates LabView data acquisition system (DAQ) was built to conduct endurance test where it can be operated for up to 280 bar, running continuously with several safety features. The rig was used to test the oil and other stringent parameters, running for nearly 10000 hours at the temperature of 70 ºC under constant pressure of 70 bar and pump speed of 40 Hz. Major factors in the decrease of mechanical efficiency are thermal heat, friction, aging behaviour and contamination of the plant oil. Explained in this paper are the features of the hydraulic system built to evaluate the performance of plant oils, accompanied by some results for evaluating the suitability of the usage of plant oil as hydraulic fluid