Stress Analysis of the Cylinder Block in an Axial Piston Pump

Abstract

For axial piston units, product optimisation plays an essential role in the development phase, where an efficient and price-attractive product design and manufacturing process is the key to the success of a product. Moreover, the market needs are on lighter, more compact, efficient, and reliable products designed to the limit. Therefore, reliability is the focus of this work, where the research includes method analysis of the material stress calculation applied to the cylinder block implemented in an axial piston pump. A simplified calculation model is presented and evaluated concerning load while remaining accessible for users without deep technical knowledge or access to expensive Finite Element (FE) simulation tools. The analytical calculation method delivers a stress distribution intended for different purposes like design evaluation or as load spectrum for lifetime calculation. Additionally, the developed calculation method is generalised, enabling the methodology to be used on any standard axial piston pump. The methodology utilises the stress determination model, which includes the load as a sum of forces caused by the external and internal influencing factors. To show the method’s success, a comparison demonstrates strong positive agreement between the calculated and simulated stress results obtained by Finite Element Analysis.