A particular emphasis is placed on the virtual prototype technology （VPT） of axial piston pump. With this technology it is convenient and flexible to build a complicated 3D virtual based on real physical model. The actual kinematics pairs of the parts were added on the model. The fluid characters were calculated by hydraulic software. The shape of the parts, the flexible body of parts, etc were improved in this prototype. So the virtual prototype of piston pump can work in computer like a real piston pump, and the flow ripple, pressure pulsation, motion principle, stress of parts, etc can be investigated. The development of the VPT is introduced at the beginning, and the modeling process of the virtual prototype is explained. Then a special emphasis is laid on the relationship between the dynamics model and the hydraulic model, and the simulations on the flow ripple, pressure pulsation, motion principle, the stress and strain distribution of the middle shaft and piston are operated. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the VPT are discussed. The improved virtual prototype of piston pump more tally with the real situation and the VPT has a great potential in simulation on hydraulic components.
The flow ripple, which is the source of noise in an axial piston pump, is widely studied today with the computational fluid dynamic（CFD） technology development. In the traditional CFD modeling, the fluid compressibility, which strongly influences the accuracy of the flow ripple simulation results, is often neglected. So a compressible sub-model was added with user defined function（UDF） in the CFD model to predict the flow ripple. At the same time, a test rig of flow ripple was built to study the validity of simulation. The flow ripple of pump was tested with different working parameters, including the rotation speed and the working pressure. The comparisons with experimental results show that the validity of the CFD model with compressible hydraulic oil is acceptable in analyzing the flow tipple characteristics. In this paper, the improved CFD model increases the accuracy of flow ripple rate to about one-magnitude order. Therefore, the compressible model of hydraulic oil is necessary in the flow ripple investigation of CFD simulation. The compressibility of hydraulic oil has significant effect on flow ripple, and the compression ripple takes about 88% of the total flow ripple of pump. Leakage ripple has the lowest proportion of about 4%, and geometrical ripple leakage ripple takes the remnant 8%. Besides, the influence of working parameters was investigated through the CFD simulations and experimental measurements. Comparison results show that the amplitude of flow ripple grows with the increasing of rotation speed and working pressure, and the flow ripple rate is independent of the rotation speed. However, flow ripple rate of piston pump grows with the increasing of working pressure, because the leakage ripple will increase with the pressure growing. The investigation on flow ripple of an axial piston pump using compressible hydraulic oil provides a more validity simulation model for the CFD analyzing and is beneficial to further understanding of the flow ripple characteristics in an axial piston pump.
