Wednesday, November 25, 2020
A Proposal for Modelling Fluid Power Systems
Hydraulics & Pneumatics: As a young engineering student many years ago, I was taught that an electrical energy source was comprised of an ideal generating element in series with an output impedance. The output impedance accounts for the fact that an internal voltage drop causes the output voltage to fall as load current is increased. It did not occur to me that this was, in reality, a simple mathematical model of a real generator.
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A redesigned fluid modeling system would certainly be interesting to see, but I am hesitant to believe that it will get anywhere substantial. I remember learning back in engineering design courses that the first thing you have to address is the "gap" you are trying to bridge, and I just don't entirely know if this gap is big enough. As the author notes, the system in place has done its job when relaying information from technical people to technical people, but isn't clear at lower levels. In comparison, electronics design is accessible at all levels, since the symbols and physics is largely the same. As much as we compare fluid and electrical systems (so much so it took up a solid chunk of my Arduino lectures), fluids gets vastly more complicated very quickly. Symbolically trying to capture the transition from the linear laminar flow region to non-linear turbulent region is just too complex to capture in a schematic (or wouldn't need to be conveyed at all).
The author also talks about the idea of fluid simulation models and accessibility to those software's, but again the line needs to be drawn somewhere. For example, structural analysis software such as RISA all use beam and column equations derived for members, however a program like Solidworks would analyze a structure purely using finite element analysis. In many ways a finite element setup is easer to program for certain structures, but the question remains about its accuracy without a fundamental understanding of the mechanics of your system.
I also think their symbols could be clearer, for example instead of a barely noticeable letter 'I' on the detail for ideal pumps, why not put 100% instead? To me that immediately tells me this is assumed to have 100% efficiency, and scales down for real pumps with inefficiency. When I first saw the symbol proposed, I honestly thought there was an error on the webpage.
I guess at the end of the day, I have to ask if this is really needed for the industry, or if smaller changes would be sufficient.
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