The Innovative Hydraulics and Automation (IHA) laboratory at Tampere University in Finland hosted the 18^th Scandinavian International Conference on Fluid Power (SICFP) from May 30 to June 1, 2023. Researchers and industry experts from 37 companies, 19 academic institutions, and 17 countries congregated to exchange information and advance fluid power forward. Here are some highlights from the conference.

Mobile machinery is responsible for 30% of global CO2 emissions. As such, governments worldwide have set net-zero targets as stringent as 2025 (Denmark) and as far out as 2050 (U.S.).

“It sounds very far, but it’s not,” said Tatiana Minav, professor at Tampere University and chairperson of SICFP 2023. “If we want to leave this planet for our children and grandchildren, we must act.”

Since the early 2000s, OEMs have been developing electric and hybrid prototypes. But government expectations and creeping target dates put pressure on mobile machine manufacturers to increase the speed and variety of solutions. Not long ago, we entered an innovation boom where all manufacturers became vested in alternative technologies and rethinking design from multiple perspectives.

“Fluid power is expanding,” said Minav. “We’re looking for new applications, solutions, and components. We’re building new types of actuators and investigating new materials. We’re looking for condition monitoring and preventive and predictive maintenance. We’re implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning. There are many options that we can explore.”

In response to the world’s demand for sustainable technology and environmental consciousness, researchers are working tirelessly to develop products that make positive impacts. This year, SICFP received 52 abstracts and accepted 38 peer-reviewed papers into the conference, which will be publicly available in December 2023. Topics included electrification and hybrid solutions; condition monitoring; novel drives, transmissions, and actuators; safety and productivity; automation; controls; hydraulic components; and modeling and design methods.

Opening keynote speaker Alexander Flaig, SVP of engineering at Bosch Rexroth, started SICFP with lessons learned from adapting automotive electronics to off-highway equipment. Mobile applications are more diverse and demanding than automotive vehicles, with different operating conditions and safety considerations. So, in transferring and adapting technology to meet off-highway requirements, Flaig challenged the SICFP audience by asking, “Where will you set your priorities?”

Engineers weigh the benefits of optimizing hydraulic components, adding automation and assistive devices, optimizing hydraulic systems, or moving from diesel to electric. Most of the time, electrification yields the greatest efficiency gains and energy savings. However, how can companies transfer and adapt current products to meet electrification goals?

Flaig described case studies in which Bosch Rexroth adapted automotive components for mobile machinery by altering some physical aspects and reconfiguring others with software.

“I would say that 30% of cases deal with different requirements between on-highway and off-highway. The other 70% is covering the variants and extending the envelope of your specification to fit more off-highway applications,” said Flaig.

In addition to technical aspects, he also stressed the importance of economies of scale and scope when designing and adapting a product, which necessitates a modular architecture to make it work.

“If you have the right architecture upfront, and if you have the right people to take care of that architecture, you can make it happen,” said Flaig.

Many OEMs are experimenting with designs that integrate multiple diverse technologies, such as diesel, battery electric, and fuel cells. Yet, such ambitions can easily strain engineering resources.

“The race is on for the right level of integration of e-machine and power electronics,” said Flaig.

And as the next keynote, Kalle Einola, R&D manager of technology, product safety, and IPR at Ponsse, clarified, integration doesn’t mean 100% electric.

“When people talk hybrid, they tend to go full electrification,” said Einola. “But hybrid doesn’t need to be electric.”

Einola admitted that hydraulics in forestry equipment isn’t efficient, and there are plenty of opportunities for improvement. He mentioned on-demand drives that prevent idling and yield energy savings, yet ideal component offerings aren’t quite there. Also, system complexity and costs are increasing, which makes electrifying challenging.

“It’s really about disconnecting the final drive load and using a battery as energy storage,” said Einola. “But everything starts with the work cycle, and electrification doesn’t fit all forestry applications.”

For example, it’s common to assume that booms perform an auxiliary function, but booms are critical in forestry and not the easiest to improve.

“The true strength of hydraulics is its extreme power density and ability to generate huge forces in a compact envelope, especially in linear actuation,” said Einola. “In forestry, it will be difficult or impossible to switch hydraulic booms to electro-mechanical, for example, without major reengineering of the mechanics.”

However, he’s optimistic about rethinking hydraulics and combining variable-speed electric drives for promising innovations in the future.

Speaking of the future, Marcus Geimer, professor at Karlsruher Institut für Technology, spoke next about megatrends — complex global phenomena that influence everything: people and society, health care, environment and resources, economics and business, technology and innovation, and politics and governance. Geimer focused on global warming and digitalization trends that influence combustion engine design and intelligent, autonomous machines.

He pointed out energy storage challenges for off-highway machinery and compared the mass and volume of tanks for diesel fuel, hydrogen gas, liquid hydrogen, electric batteries, and biogas.

“The bigger the tractor gets, the difference between weight and volume increases. But with smaller tractors, you might have a chance to electrify.,” said Geimer.

Geimer challenged the audience to consider why we use one large machine for specific applications and whether deploying multiple small robots or smaller electric machines to do the same job is feasible.

For construction and agricultural applications, replacing diesel-powered equipment with electric or hydrogen-fueled machines certainly reduces emissions and noise and can increase autonomous and remotely controlled operations. However, glaring challenges inhibit big machines from making the switch, mainly infrastructure and battery durability. Yet digitalization in the form of artificial intelligence and machine learning is paving a path for smarter, more autonomous machines.

“Where shall we go in the future?” said Geimer. “I think we will see smaller machines electrified. We will see bigger machines using methane, hydrogen, or liquid fuels. And I think digitalization plays a very important role and will influence the machine of the future.”

SICFP’s day-one afternoon session was filled with incredible research presentations on how the right algorithms can make electrification and hybrid systems work and how simulations can predict failures and improve operations. Safety was also emphasized in tandem with business and productivity solutions for heavy-duty mobile machines.

The evening was filled with friendly conversation and an eloquent dinner at the historic Tuulensuu Palatsi, where Emil Nørregård Olesen, Ph.D. student of AAU Energy in collaboration with Danfoss Power Solutions, was presented with the Best Paper Award, sponsored by IHA and Fluid Power World.

“The research is about new steering concepts within orbital steering units that increase the responsiveness of steering such that the operator has better control of the vehicle,” said Olesen. “It’s a product that we are launching this year, hopefully, and that we have been able to showcase with studies from universities and customers. But there were difficulties because the new concept is asymmetrical. So, we had to change the design to ensure it has at least the same performance as a regular unit.”

The following day, SICFP attendees were back at Tampere-talo to learn about technology and trends from industry experts. Yukio Kamizuru, product owner of Systems Solutions and Digital Services at Bosch Rexroth, began the session discussing servo-hydraulic pump units, emphasizing displacement-controlled actuators and modular system design.

“We cannot fight variants. We have to deal with it and make the best out of it. And one approach we have is modularizing,” said Kamizuru. “It’s not rocket science, and it’s not the cure for all problems. Not everything can be solved that way. But imagine if we solve 10, 20, or 30% of what’s feasible with displacement control, we would be a huge step ahead.”

Kamizuru also discussed how noise is an emission that can be reduced with improved modular designs. He provided auditory examples to compare a standard pump motor unit with Bosch Rexroth’s SHP4V servo-hydraulic pump unit. The SHP4V was unexpectedly quiet mainly because of its stiffer antenna with no coupling or pipe work around it. The design intention was to make it easy to apply and not customer specific — a clear objective from management. And because of this approach and the impressive noise reduction, the unit even made it into the plastics sector.

“Our goal is to make the application as simple as possible,” said Kamizuru. “For me, it’s sustaining innovation. It’s nothing radical, nothing new. It’s a sustainable solution, but not because of the product — it’s because of the system technology behind it. It’s simple engineering…Now, it’s on us to decide what to do. Do we stick to single-digit efficiency figures, or do we make the step and increase efficiency?”

The morning industry expert session shifted from hydraulics to hydrogen as another solution along the electrification journey. Lucien Robroek, CEO of Nuvera Fuel Cells, started with an overview of fuel cell technology.

“If you put hydrogen and oxygen together, they want to boil. There’s a chemical reaction, and water is produced. It’s a very exothermic reaction in which protons exchange, electrons exchange, and heat develops. It can be very aggressive if you don’t control it. A fuel cell is nothing more than trying to control that chemical reaction,” said Robroek. “This is not a conversion of hydrogen. In a fuel cell, we try to control the exchange of protons and electrons. We bring gasses from two sides into one area, and in the middle, there’s a membrane that only lets protons through and forces electrons out. The stream of electrons outside of the membrane creates electricity. It’s that simple.”

Robroek quickly clarified that the concept is simple, but controlling the reaction is not. However, once controlled, fuel cells can be placed next to each other to form stacks as large as necessary, making the technology modular for various applications. Nuvera controls gas flow over the membrane surface with its patented Open Flow Field technology to get the highest efficiency out of every cell in a stack.

“Efficiency is not only governed by the fuel cell stack in the engine — it’s much more about how we interact and deploy, the work zone, and energy recuperation. All of that is much more important than single components. You need to have good components, but it’s more important to make it all work together,” said Robroek.

It’s also important for people to work together to drive innovation forward, as Peter Achten, CEO of Innas, discussed. To close out the industry expert session, Achten showed a slide representing fluid power as helpless and powerless. He presented the same slide at SICFP 2019 and challenged the audience to innovate, or else he’d repurpose the slide in 2023, which he did.

“Well, here I am back again. And here it is, the first slide of our presentation,” said Achten. “But is this true? Are we powerless? Did indeed nothing change in the past four years? After all, we have made many developments. We have been working very hard on extremely modern technologies…But are these technologies solving the key problems?”

Achten agreed that the fluid power industry will indeed need advanced controls, artificial intelligence, and machine learning — but not before it solves the key problem of increasing hydraulic efficiency to 70% or more. Since the last SICFP conference, no new solutions have solved this problem. However, he believes fluid power has enormous growth potential for new technologies, such as Innas’ hydraulic transformer. SICFP 2023 was the first time Achten presented the new solution Innas developed not just for improved efficiency but also to improve reliability, durability, safety, and productivity.

“Mobile machines are production machines. These are not cars. Productivity is not about how fast you can drive from A to B. Productivity is about how fast you can get a job done. And efficient systems are not necessarily productive systems,” said Achten. “We need to find solutions that are both efficient and very productive. And that is not easy.”

Achten described the floating cup principle and how Innas designed its hydraulic transformer to reduce energy losses without reducing productivity. He ended the presentation with an inspirational message (and the same helpless, powerless fluid power slide):

“It’s now up to you to innovate, use your bright minds, and find new solutions. Solutions that fulfill the needs of both society and the industry. The Greek philosopher Plato wrote a long time ago that necessity is the mother of invention. Well then, you can’t wait. There is a strong necessity that the industry is waiting almost desperately for solutions that are efficient, dynamic, and productive. So once more, I urge you to come up with groundbreaking new solutions. And once more, I warn you, if before this time nothing’s changed, this will be the first slide of my next presentation here in Tampere.”

The day-two afternoon was again filled with exceptional fluid power research presentations on automation, components, controls, models, electro-hydraulics, and valves. Then, conference attendees traveled to the IHA Mobile Lab for live demonstrations of Tampere University’s mobile machine research and testing.

At the IHA Mobile Lab, Daniel Eriksson, Ph.D. student at Tampere University, won the Best Student Paper award for his research on automatic bucket filling for wheel loaders.

“Different materials have different loading strategies, so how can you do it efficiently?” said Eriksson. “I’m using machine learning techniques, which is usually a data-driven process. I test and prove that it’s possible to use transfer learning to reduce the number of data points you have to collect.”

Additionally, Abid Abdul Azeez, doctoral researcher at Tampere University, won the Best Presentation Award for showcasing his research on simulating external gear pump behavior to generate data for condition monitoring.

“I started my presentation with a story from my life to explain why I’m doing my research, then went straight into the topic. I’m continuing my research on condition monitoring for electro-hydraulic systems and working on a journal paper,” said Azeez. “Previously, due to COVID, we missed opportunities to meet people face-to-face. At SICFP, we can meet people from the industry, not just academia, so there is more room for collaboration.”

SICFP 2023 was an enormous success that benefited every attendee professionally and personally. And it opened doors for many who attended for the first time.

“It was a great experience to meet people, and the presentations were high quality,” said Joonas Suoverinaho, research assistant at Tampere University. “It’s really important to have communication between industry and academia.”

Attendees from Finland and around the globe unanimously agreed that networking was one of the best parts of the conference.

“I had a chance to talk with people and ask them what kinds of problems they encounter in their research,” said Zakhar Afanesev, research assistant at Tampere University. “During research, you build up a knowledge base that you can use in future projects or even in life.”

This year’s conference exceeded expectations and brought new perspectives to encourage challenging questions and diverse conversations. Competitors sat at the same table — as they do in this tight-knit, fluid power community — to discuss how research and industry can help meet each country’s net-zero targets.

“We want our work to make it to industry faster. This year, 60% of attendees were from industry, and they all received our contact information and research papers to learn and talk to us to positively impact their businesses,” said Minav. “All of this is part of a bigger picture, and behind all of it is fluid power. This is the new fluid power. It’s not just hydraulics anymore.”

SICFP will return to Tampere University in 2027. For more information on the 2023 conference, visit https://events.tuni.fi/sicfp2023.

---

Filed Under: News
Tagged With: sicfp
 

---