Experimental and Numerical Vibration Analysis of Hydraulic Pipeline System under Multiexcitations

Pipeline systems in aircraft are subjected to both hydraulic pump pressure fluctuations and base excitation from the engine. This can cause fatigue failures due to excessive vibrations. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the vibration behavior of the pipeline system under multiexcitations. In this paper, experiments have been conducted to describe the hydraulic pipeline systems, in which fluid pressure excitation in pipeline is driven by the throttle valve, and the base excitation is produced by the shaker driven by a vibration controller. An improved model which includes fluid motion and base excitation is proposed. A numerical MOC-FEM approach which combined the coupling method of characteristics (MOC) and finite element method (FEM) is proposed to solve the equations. The results show that the current MOC-FEM method could predict the vibration characteristics of the pipeline with sufficient accuracy. Moreover, the pipeline under multiexcitations could produce an interesting beat phenomenon, and this dangerous phenomenon is investigated for its consequences from engineering point of view.