Browse Topic: Pumps
A team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy Ames National Laboratory developed a magnetocaloric heat pump that matches current vapor-compression heat pumps for weight, cost, and performance. Current heating and cooling devices are based on vapor-compression technology, which is over 100 years old. They rely on refrigerants that contribute to global carbon emissions, and when they leak the chemicals are harmful to people and the environment.
Standard cylindrical and second-throat diffusers allow supersonic gas flows to expand within their walls and pull a vacuum on any upstream void. However, the high-Mach-number shock reflections that occur in the center of the plume create substantial losses and result in an inefficient pumping process. Centerbody diffuser designs provide an improvement by reducing the maximum Mach number of the core flow as well as increase the number of oblique shocks in the system by introducing multiple turns into the system.
The reliability of Drive Unit (DU) oil pumps is critical to the performance and safety of electric vehicles, as these pumps provide essential lubrication and thermal management. In modern EV architectures, real-time health monitoring of these pumps typically relies on indirect signals than dedicated sensing hardware, a design choice optimized for cost, weight, and system complexity. This makes early fault detection a non-trivial challenge. To address this limitation, we present a novel, data-driven anomaly detection framework that leverages large-scale customer fleet telemetry and advanced machine learning to identify incipient pump degradation that traditional diagnostic methods often fail to capture. Specifically, we develop an XGBoost regression model trained on time-series features—including commanded pump speed, oil temperature, and historical pump current—to predict expected current behavior under nominal conditions. Deviations are quantified using the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) between predicted and actual currents, providing a continuous and interpretable measure of anomaly severity. A fully automated pipeline ingests daily telemetry, performs session segmentation, executes predictive modeling, and records anomaly outcomes in backend databases for continuous monitoring and engineering review. The proposed framework enables continuous, fleet-wide predictive maintenance of DU oil pumps. It improves early detection of degradation, reduces vehicle downtime, enhances safety, and increases customer satisfaction. More broadly, it highlights the potential of large-scale data analytics and machine learning to advance predictive maintenance and reliability in electric vehicle (EV) systems.
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new cooling technology that could significantly improve the energy efficiency of data centers and high-powered electronics. The technology features a specially engineered fiber membrane that passively removes heat through evaporation. It offers a promising alternative to traditional cooling systems like fans, heat sinks and liquid pumps. It could also reduce the water use associated with many current cooling systems.
Off-highway equipment operates in an environment defined by extremes - extreme loads, extreme duty cycles, extreme temperatures and extreme expectations. OEMs and fleet operators face mounting pressure to deliver more power, more uptime and more precision from platforms that are becoming increasingly compact, intelligent and complex. Whether the task is hauling, lifting, dumping, clearing or moving materials, the equipment must deliver consistent, reliable performance without compromise. This pressure is reshaping the mobile-hydraulic ecosystem. The industry is steadily shifting away from piecemeal systems and toward integrated, intelligent power architectures that maximize efficiency across the entire vehicle. Leaders in this space, Eaton among them, demonstrate how a system-level approach to PTOs, hydraulic pumps and control valves is enabling a new generation of off-highway innovation.
The shift from batch to continuous bioprocessing is reshaping the way fluid handling systems are designed, specified, and validated in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. Continuous processing promises higher productivity, reduced footprint, and improved product consistency, but it also places new and sustained demands on every component in the fluid path. Among the most critical — and often underestimated — elements is peristaltic pump tubing.
The high-pressure steering hose in a hydraulic steering system carries pressurized hydraulic fluid from the power steering pump to the steering gear (or steering rack). Its main function is to transmit the force generated by the pump so that the hydraulic pressure assists the driver in turning the wheels more easily. The high-pressure hydraulic pipeline in the power steering system is a vital component for ensuring optimal performance. During warranty analysis, leakage incidents were observed at the customer end within the warranty period. The primary factors contributing to these failures include pipe material thickness, material composition, mechanical properties, and engine-induced vibrations. This study investigates fatigue-related failures through detailed material characterization and Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) based on real world usage road load data collected. The objective is to identify the root causes by examining the influence of varying pipe thickness on fatigue life. The investigation discovered that crack initiation predominantly occurred on the concave side of bent pipe sections, specifically on the engine-side high-pressure steering line, which is connected to the power steering pump mounted on the engine. Fracture surfaces exhibited characteristics consistent with fatigue failure, with crack propagation primarily oriented longitudinally along the pipe. The highest tangential stresses were observed on the out word, resulting from the combined effects of internal hydraulic pressure and vibrational loads. Fatigue cracks originated from the inner surface and propagated outward under cyclic stresses induced by pressure fluctuations and engine vibrations during vehicle operation on the road. Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) simulations indicated that the failure mechanism was primarily attributable to an incorrect material thickness selection during the development phase. Modifications to the pipe design, including increased material thickness, were implemented, leading to improved performance in subsequent testing. The high-pressure hydraulic pipeline exhibits decreased failure rates and improved reliability and durability following the implementation of the revised design.
Devin Brock TE Connectivity
An important characteristic of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is their noise signature. Besides tire and wind noise, noise from auxiliaries as pumps, the electric drive unit (EDU) is one of the major contributors. The dynamic and acoustic behavior of EDUs can be significantly affected by production tolerances. The effects that lead to these scatter bands must be understood to be able to control them better and thus guarantee a consistently high quality of the products and a silent and pleasant drive. The paper discusses a simulation driven approach to investigate production tolerances and their effect on the NVH behavior of the EDU, using high precision transient multi-body dynamic analysis. This approach considers the main effects, influences, and the interaction from elastic structures of electric motor and transmission with accurate gear contact models in a fully coupled way. It serves as virtual end of line test, applicable in all steps of a new EDU development, by increasing front loading. Various parameters such as clearances, gear microgeometry, bearing deviation, misalignment, unbalance, electrical excitation, and control effects can be investigated for their sensitivity and impact on transfer and response. Such a model is applied for dynamic analyses of specific use cases and operating conditions. The important part of this paper is the demonstration of the applicability of such a fully physical and complex approach for large-scale DoE to investigate the required tolerance space for the defined parameters and the parameter combinations without the need of model simplification or transfer to frequency domain and by making use of high-performance computers in clusters. The derived data is further on used to train a surrogate data model to cover the whole parameter space. The effect of changes on specific NVH KPI’s like mechanical orders, resulting in gear whine, and their separation from electrical orders, as well as the specific root cause of a detected phenomenon can be analyzed.
Rolling bearings with optimized friction and performance characteristics can have a significant influence on reducing the power loss, design envelope and weight of hydraulic motors and pumps, gearboxes and axles in construction machinery. If correctly designed, rolling bearings can make a significant contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Most construction machinery is still operated conventionally, using diesel engines and hydraulic components. In the widely used adjustable axial piston pumps and motors, the input and output shaft are usually supported by two tapered roller bearings that are adjusted against each other. When designing the bearing support, it is advisable to reduce the preload to precisely the required minimum allowed by the load spectrum. The lower bearing preload leads to permanently lower axial forces between the tapered roller end face and inner ring rib and, therefore, to a corresponding reduction in frictional torque.
Centralization of electrically driven hydraulic power packs into the body of aircraft has increased attention on the noise and vibration characteristics of the system. A hydraulic power pack consists of a pump coupled to an electrical motor, accumulator, reservoir, and associated filter manifolds. In previous studies, the characteristics of radiated acoustic noise and fluid borne noise were studied. In this paper, we focus on the structure-borne forces generated by the hydraulic pump characterized through blocked force measurements. The blocked force of the pump was determined experimentally using an indirect measurement method. The indirect method required operation with part under test fixed to an instrumented receiver structure. Measured operational accelerations on the receiver plate were used in conjunction with transfer function measurements to predict the blocked forces. Blocked forces were validated by comparing directly measured accelerations to predicted accelerations at positions on the receiver plate that were not used for the inverse calculation. To build further confidence in the results, two receiving structures were used to calculate the blocked forces and blocked forces were compared. The determined blocked forces can be used by aircraft OEM’s for further acoustic evaluation.
Researchers are bringing together multiple areas of technical expertise to improve LVAD performance and outcomes. One team will develop a smart magnetically levitated (Maglev) drive system that can sense the body’s physiological changes and automatically adjust the pump speed to meet the patient’s daily output requirement, such as for exercising and sleeping.
Curtiss-Wright Corporation Davidson, NC info@curtisswright.com
For many patients waiting for a donor heart, the only way to live a decent life is with the help of a pump attached directly to their heart. This pump requires about as much power as a TV, which it draws from an external battery via a seven-millimeter-thick cable. The system is handy and reliable, but it has one big flaw: despite medical treatment, the point at which the cable exits the abdomen can be breached by bacteria.
A Gerotor pump is a positive displacement pump consisting of inner and outer rotors, with the axis of inner rotor offset from axis of outer rotor. Both rotors rotate about their respective axes. The volume between the rotors changes dynamically, due to which suction and compression occurs. Due to their high-speed rotations, a Gerotor pump may be subjected to erosion due to cavitation. This paper details about the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based methodology that has been used to capture cavitation bubbles, which might form during the operation of Gerotor pump and to identify the erosion zone which might be occur due to cavitation bubble getting burst near the surface layers of the gears. A full scale (3D) transient CFD model of a Gerotor pump has been developed using commercial CFD code ANSYS FLUENT. The most challenging part of this CFD flow modeling is to create a dynamic volume mesh that perfectly represents the dynamically changing rotor fluid volume of the Gerotor pump. Two different approaches have been used to model this dynamic mesh analysis in the Ansys Fluent tool – one method by using the traditional UDF script and, another method by using Python automation script. This CFD methodology includes complex geometry of the Gerotor along with moving fluid volume between two rotors. The complex flow through Gerotor has been successfully modeled using dynamic mesh & Volume of Fluid (VOF) model for entire 8 rotations. This paper helps an engineer to choose an easy and quick alternative method to model a complex flow through a Gerotor, understanding the flow physics and helps the engineers to improve the design by reducing erosion & increasing its life cycle.
As medical devices in today’s modern medicine continue to advance, they require power supplies that allow them to perform an ever-widening roles. These lightweight, wearable — and even implantable — medical devices comprise everything from activity/exercise watches, hearing aids, and medical call buttons to pacemakers, insulin pump monitors, and neuro- or gastric stimulators, as well as implantable cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators (ICDs). The rechargeable batteries used in these devices must provide for such vital functions as monitoring, signal processing, collecting and transmitting data, and providing specialized electronic pulses when needed to stimulate cardiac output and other physiological activity.
Pump systems are ubiquitous in medical and life science products, from blood pressure monitors and drug-delivery devices, to pipettors and diagnostic instruments. As the demand for smaller, less intrusive — sometimes even wearable — products grow, engineers must meet these expectations without compromising on pump system performance.
Until recently, microscopic robotic systems have had to make do without arms. Now, a team at ETH Zurich has developed an ultrasonically actuated glass needle that can be attached to a robotic arm. This lets them pump and mix minuscule amounts of liquid and trap particles.
Compact off-highway machines should be as maneuverable, versatile and energy-efficient as possible. Key to achieving these goals is the electronification of the working hydraulics. New mini excavators, wheel loaders and track loaders from the Eurocomach brand, which is part of the Italian Sampierana Group, demonstrates the improvements that can be gained by utilizing electrohydraulic pump control and software. Sampierana first launched the electronification of its working hydraulics on its six-ton mini excavators. “Our compact construction machines are used for a wide variety of jobs,” said Giuseppe Fabbri, technical manager at Sampierana. “Loading, excavating or digging should be very accurate or quick and productive to perform, as needed, and also support a wide range of tools - from shovels to hammers or mowers.”
Most of the world is covered in oceans, which are unfortunately highly polluted. One of the strategies to combat the mounds of waste found in these very sensitive ecosystems — especially around coral reefs — is to employ robots to master the cleanup. However, existing underwater robots are mostly bulky with rigid bodies, unable to explore and sample in complex and unstructured environments, and are noisy due to electrical motors or hydraulic pumps. For a more suitable design, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart looked to nature for inspiration.
There are about 64 million cases of heart failure worldwide. According to the American Heart Association, 6.2 million adults in the United States have heart failure and that number is estimated to increase to 8 million by 2030. Heart failure is a progressive clinical syndrome characterized by a structural abnormality of the heart, in which the heart is unable to pump sufficient blood to meet the body’s requirements.
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