A Study on the Control Characteristics of ER Valve-FHA System and Durability Test

In this paper, making the best use of the features of the electro-rheological (ER) valve, a two-port pressure control valve using ER fluids is proposed and manufactured. The ER-Valve characteristics are evaluated by changing the intensity of the electric field and the number of electrode. As only with electrical signal change to the ER-Valve in which ER fluid flowing, ER fluid flow is controlled, so development of simple ER-Valves have been tried. The ER-Valves and pressure drop check method are considered to be applied to the fluid power industry. Using the manufactured pressure control valve, a one-link manipulator with FHA (Flexible Hydraulic Actuator) is driven. As a result, it is experimentally confirmed that the pressure control valve using ER fluids is applicable to use in driving actuator. If it applies characteristics of the ER fluids, it will be able to apply in the control system for the ER Valve which occurs from industrial controller. After having durability test, shear stress increased regularly because of starch particles crushed by pump and particle size that was almost the same. Moreover, Ra of copper electrode increased about 1.56 times rather than before those of performing durability test, and Rz increased about 2.2 times.