Energy saving of a hydrostatic drive system by incorporating soft switch

A soft switching concept for the purpose of energy saving during on-off valve controlling of a hydrostatic drive system has been reported in this article. The soft switch has been incorporated in a state-of-the-art configuration in the drive circuit. Some identified soft switch parameters have been optimized with respect to minimum throttling energy loss using multi-run-simulation in bond graph. The bond graph technique has been used for the simulation study as it is based on power flow representation and guarantees energetic consistency in the model structure. Two different bond graph models, with and without the soft switch, have been simulated and validated experimentally; and the power and energy losses during spool movements of the directional control valve have been compared to quantify the energy savings. The study reveals that savings of more than 50% throttling energy can be possible using a soft switch in a switched mode hydrostatic drive system.