Novel control strategy for the energy recovery system of a hydraulic excavator

The energy saving of hydraulic excavators is always an essential research. An energy recovery system can effectively recover the boom potential energy and rotational kinetic energy. Based on the standard working cycle of hydraulic excavators, a dynamic programming (DP) control strategy for hybrid hydraulic excavators was proposed to recover the boom potential energy and rotational kinetic energy. The hybrid hydraulic excavator simulation model was built by Simulink software. The simulation results indicated that the fuel consumption of hybrid hydraulic excavators using the DP control strategy was about 21.3% lower than that of the conventional hydraulic excavator. In order to experimentally verify the simulation results, an experimental platform for hybrid hydraulic excavators was built. The experimental results indicated that the fuel consumption of hybrid hydraulic excavators using the DP control strategy was about 18.9% lower than that of the conventional hydraulic excavator. This paper shows that the DP control strategy applied to hybrid hydraulic excavators can recycle the boom potential energy and rotational kinetic energy, and reduce the fuel consumption of hybrid hydraulic excavators.