SUMMARY

Hydraulic Fluid Power today is used by several large and important industries. As is the case with any instance of power transfer, hydraulic actuation is plagued by several sources of inefficiencies, some by design and some by nature. The use of throttling to regulate actuation rate is often revealed to be a major source of energy loss in hydraulic systems. This thesis addresses this energy loss inducing mechanism of speed control through the development of an improved hydraulic actuation system.

A novel energy-recovering architecture for hydraulic actuation is conceptualized and shown to be a possible efficient alternative to throttle-based hydraulic actuation. Additionally, high-fidelity simulations are used to asses its merits against a competing energy-recovering architecture. Establishing the novel architecture as a strong alternative paved the way for further development. Optimization techniques including Monte Carlo computation and Dynamic programming are then used to size and control the architecture, thereby fully defining a project attractive for future development.