Control Valves for Cylinder Regenerative Circuits

The principle of cylinder regeneration is relatively simple and well known. Any fluid power textbook has a small section where mention is made of a different connection of cylinder ports, which changes the speed and force characteristics and may be occasionally used to solve design problems (e.g. to reduce the length of a working cycle or the size of a pump). On the other side. the technical catalogues of some valve manufacturers offer the so-called regeneration valves. which change automatically the cylinder connections and Switch regeneration on and off. The aim of this paper is to relate to each other these two inputs by investigating the special feautres ofregeneration in general, and compare two types of valves in particular. The comparison is carried out by using two approaches (numerical simulations and laboratory experiments) which are complementary to one another.