2012 12th Intemational Conference on Control, Automation and Systems Oct, 17-21, 2012 in ICC, Jeju Island, Korea Reducing the Static Friction in Hydraulic Cylinders by Maintaining Relative Velocity Between Piston and Cylinder Morten Ottestad?, Nicolai Nilsen? and Michael Rygaard Hansen** {Department of Engineering, University of Agder, Jon Lilletunsvei 9, 4879 Grimstad, Norway (Tel : +47 3723 3122; E-mail: morten.ottestad @uia.no) 2 Aker Solutions, Butangen 20, 4639 Kristiansand, Norway (Tel : +47 3805 7825; E-mail: nicolai.nilsen@akersolutions.com) “Department of Engineering, University of Agder, Jon Lilletunsvei 9, 4879 Grimstad, Norway (Tel : +47 3723 3204; E-mail: michael.rhansen@uia.no) * Corresponding author Abstract: This paper is concemed with friction in hydraulic cylinders and it's influence on the performance of hy« ically actuated system. A method for the elimination of stiction in hydraulic cylinders is presented and experimentally verified. The method utilizes the rotational degree of freedom between the piston and the cylinder to add relative velocity at the contact surfaces between piston and cylinder when the main axial motion is zero. For modeling purposes an aug- ‘mentation of the Stribeck friction force equation is introduced that reflects the influence of the added motion. The possible impact of stiction elimination on the performance of heave compensation equipment is discussed and examplified via time domain simulations Keywords: Static friction, hydraulic cylinder, heave compensation. 1. INTRODUCTION conditions. Hence, during drilling some kind of heave compensation is requited for two purposes - maintaining load on the deilling tool and maintaining tension in the riser that coats the drill string in the water. Today this type of heave compensation is typically per- formed by either passive or active heave compensation. Passive heave compensation utilizes large hydraulic~ pneumatic cylinder-piston arrangements that effectively suspends the drill-string or the riser in a weak gas spring. ‘The weakness of the spring is designed so that the spring force is approximately constant independent of the heave ‘motion induced by the surrounding conditions. The fric~ tion in the main cylinder may, however, easily dominate the variations in cylinder force and, subsequently, have a severely detrimental impact on the performance of the passive system, see [2]- [7]. One possiblity is to han- dle this by means of active heave compensation in which smaller parallel mounted hydraulic cylinders compensate for the friction An alternative to this isto design hydraulic cylinders with no or limited variations in frictional force. Optimally, a purely viscous behavior or something close to that of by- Araulic motors would be desirable over the entire oprat~ ing range. Clearly, this would requite leakage flow in the cylinder and extra hydraulic equipment to handle this in- cluding feeding pump and drainage, Alternatively, one or both of the frictional jumps could be removed. In this work this is attempted by introducing an extra rel- ative motion between the piston and the cylinder. This is the same approach already described in (8] and [9] that yielded to a purely viscous behavior of the piston cylinder Iriction. This behavior is not expected to be obtained in a large scale hydraulic cylinder, since the relative motion is considered to have a limited impact on the Coulomb fiction, i. the main target has been to eliminate friction In the field of hydraulics the two basic types of actua- tors are motors with infinite rotational output motion and cylinders with limited linear output motion, They behave 4uite differently around zero speed, Hydraulic motors are characterized by internal leakage and, consequently, al- ‘most no stiction whereas hydraulic cylinders are charac~ terized by almost no leakage and, consequently, stiction. ‘The fact that stiction is accepted in hydraulic cylinders ‘means that they put less demands on tolerances and re- quire a less specialized manufacturing setup as compared to the motors. It does, however, leave any designer us- ing hydraulic cylinders with the challenge of handling the ‘wo jumps in friction experienced around zero velocity. Adopting the Stribeck description that includes negative Viscous friction near zero velocity and Coulomb friction the two jumps are: 1. Change in sign of static friction as the velocity changes sign 2. Drop from static friction to Coulomb friction as the Velocity reaches a small absolute value. Both the challenges regarding motion control and how to pick the proper modeling that with a minimum of com- putational effort describes the important phenomena has been the subjected of intense research that is very well surveyed in [1] ‘One of the areas where friction in hydraulic cylinders rep- resents a constant challenge is in offshore drilling equip- ‘ment. Offshore oilfield development has moved to deeper ‘and harsher environments for new oil sources and, si- ‘maultaneously, the oil-rigs ate optimized with respect to Weight and size, Therefore the positioning of the oil-rigs is increasingly affected by the waves, currents and wind ‘The woik presented in his papers Tanded by te Norwegian Mansy of duction and Research and Aker Solutions ‘978-89-93215-04-5 95560/12/815 ICROS 764jump number two. Obviously, the idea of rotating the piston relative to the eylinder represents a substantial in- crease in complexity, and a propably most easily justified in large scale systems such as offshore drilling systems. 2. FRICTION IN HYDRAULIC CYLINDERS In hydraulic system analysis itis customary to model, the friction losses in the actuators by means of a hy- dromechanical efficiency, tim Positive load Negative loud Fig. 1 The four quadrants of eylinder operation. For a hydraulic eylinder this yields the following steady state expressions relating the cylinder load, FP, to the pressure force, Fp, see Fig. 1 ‘mF positive load a o aie F negative ood =A Op o Accondingly, the fiction forthe two stations i (L=mhim) Fp positive load Bie @ = negative load ‘This type of modeling only has limited applicability since the friction force goes to zero when the pressure force is zero which does not take into account static and Coulomb friction. The limitations of a fixed hydromechanical efficiency is avoided if the friction in the cylinders is described as a function of the relative axial velocity between the piston and cylinder, ve, and the pressure drop in the cylinder, Ap, see Fig. 2. In this work the velocity dependant model of [10] that includes static, Coulomb and viscous friction is combined with a pressure dependant friction: Fpe(ves) = Fo (Ps—Fo)e rel+Cp lAp| @ ‘There ate five model parameters: the static friction, F's, the Coulomb friction, For, the Stribeck velocity, vo, the 765 Ap Fig. 2 Cylinder parameters. viscous friction coefficient, Cand the pressure friction coefficient, C,, The latter term in Eg, (4) corresponds to the classical friction force described in Eqs. (1) - 3) More complex models that take presliding and history re- lated parameters into account may be found in the littera- ture, see 1]. The viscous characteristic around zero axial velocity as shown in [8] and [9] is not accounted for by Eq, (4). In this paper we propose two different models, Eq, (6) and (7) that describe the friction when the tangent velocity of the piston, vp is included. They both simplify to Eq. (4) when there is purely axial piston motion and they do not introduce any new parameters: Fyr(ve voy fa) + x |vel + Cp-|Ap (8) Fo(vs,va) = Fo + (Fs — Fo) -e (6) ‘o(ve, v0) = Fo 1 (Fs cs M v= ard ® wo-dw © According to Eqs. (6) and (7) the static friction may be avoided or reduced by ensuring an appropriate angular velocity whenever the axial velocity is close to zero. Fur= ther, Eq. (7) facilitates viscous behavior around zero ve- locity if there is no significant pressure drop. ‘The Stribeck velocity is an important parameter in the adjustment of the rotational motion, It may vary sub- stantially, according to [1], from 10~* to 10~*|m/s}, and therefore the requirement to the angular motion is some- thing that must be determined in practice. In Fig. 3 the difference in the friction force as obtained from Eq. (4), (6) and (7) is shown. 3. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION In Fig. 4 the principle used in the experimental setup is shown. The main cylinder is a differential cylinder and the main piston is supported with a roller bearing in a ‘beam that is free to translate along two sliding tacks. ‘The torque required to rotate the piston is supplied as a force couple provided by two symmetrically arrangedFre Cy Fo Cy: |Ap) de wack tan vlna] Sing am + rotational wansduce ‘Swing eylinder Translational transducer] Fig. 4 Mechanical priciple used in test rig swing cylinders via a piston mounted swing arm, The swing cylinders travel together with the beam on the slides. An external load may be supplied by two further load cylinders. The actual test rig is shown in Fig. 5. ‘The hydraulic actuation and instrumentation i illustrated in Fig. 6. ‘The test rig was developed in a undergraduate project at the University of Agder, see [11], in close cooperation swith Aker Solutions ‘The coordinated motion of the main cylinder and the swing cylinders is accomplished by means of a pressure ‘compensated proportional valve group, see Fig. 6. For such a valve the volume flow is proportional to the con- ‘wol signal and is independent of the pressure levels. This gives a kinematically determined system where the mo- tion of the main cylinder and the swing cylinders may be coordinated without closed loop control. ‘The load cylinders are controlled by a high bandwidth servo valve that gives the possibility of simulating an ex- ternal load with a view to examine the friction depen- ancy on the pressure drop in the main cylinder. The pump pressure level is set manually by a pressure relief valve operated remote from the pump. In the conducted experiments the main piston was given a sinusoidal mo- tion input and the swing cylinders were activated to pro- vvide an angular rotation of the main piston around zero 766 Fig. 5 Testrig. axial velocity. The prescribed motion of the piston is: v0 vn (F4 ) ao) w= an (FE 143) ay The basic data of the test rig and experiments are given in Table 1 Table 1 Basic data of test rig and prescribed motion. d= Tn | Goi S0nm | 6= 059 Veo = OSs [wn = OTTradss | Toye = 208 | In order to focus on the influence of the rotational motion, fn the static friction the external load was set to zero by simply connecting the service ports disectly to tank via ‘manually operated ball valves. In the absence of external loading, ie. F) = 0, we have the following approximate relation around zero velocity, Cy» v + Cp» |Ap| * 0, yielding: Av 6om|= Fy a2 Hence, the variations in the friction could be measured, via the pressures in the main cylinder chambers. In Fig. 7 atypical measured time series of Fy are shown as a func- tion of the piston velocity without any rotation of the pis- (on, Clearly, hysteresis is present asthe classical Stribeck curve is recognized for situations where piston velocity and acceleration are in the same direction whereas a vis- cous behavior is observed when they are in opposite di- rections, A curve has been fitted according to Eq. (4) that fits the positive velocity regime quite well but less so the negative velocity regime. The friction parameters thatLoad cynders Swing cylinders Fig. 6 Simplified hydraulic diagram of test rig, Table 2 Friction parameters. FylN ts we > Oki. 30 ve < 06% >0] 4 o> Ob is <0 valin/s i Loot [Es @) wa <0 % <0] Fig. 7 Measured values of Fy - no rotation of piston. ve > Okie >0 Fs = S80N [w= sms “ no ‘were identified for the cylinder are listed in Table 2. HPI) a.) In Fig. 8 a typical measured time series of Fy ate shown te Okt <0 bo With piston rotation active, Again, there is a difference in friction depending on whether the sign of velocity and acceleration are the same or not, however, the difference is less pronounced, Also, there is a distinct viscous sec~ tion that is not well described by Eq, (6) From the plot in Fig. 8 itis clear that the 2nd jump is in- deed eliminated and that a certain viscous behavior may bbe recognized justifying the model given by Eq. (7). Also the 1st jump is somewhat reduced, although it is quite clear that the viscous regime only covers a small velocity range outside which the Coulomb friction is present, 4, OFFSHORE APPLICATION ‘An example of a family of offshore applications where the static friction of the cylinder has a major impact on performance is heave compensation equipment. In this paper focus is on a crown block mounted compensator (CMO), see Fig. 9 ‘The drill string is composed of pipe segments and at the end it is connected to the drill it that cuts into the forma- tion, The drill string runs in a tubular marine riser from sea surface to seabed where it enters a blow out preventer (BOP), From the BOP the dill string runs into the well before it enters the open hole in connection with the drill bit. The marine riser is connected to the stationary seabed in one end and, indirectly, tothe platform in the other end. 767 Fig. 8 Measured values of F, - piston rotated, ‘The motion of the marine riser is contwolled by means of a tensioning system that compensates for the heave mo- tion while maintaining an approximately constant tension in the top part of the marine riser. If the crown block moves with the heave motion of the platform the drilling operation and the equipment may fail. Therefore, the crown block is connected to the plat- form motion by means of a gas spring that is sufficiently weak so that an approximately constant supporting force is maintained independent of the relative motion between, the platform and the crown block. The stiffness of the ‘gas spring is determined by the size of a gas bank. The combined weight of the drill equipment is tansferted to the gas spring via the piston of a single acting hydraulic cylinder, referred to as the main cylinder, and a hydraulic- ‘pneumatic piston that transmits the hydraulic pressure (0 the gas bank, The hydraulic-pneumatic system is shown in Fig. 10. The high pressure gas bank is used to control the pressure level of the compensator system. ‘The pressure in the main cylinder is adjusted so that the combined weight of the drill bit, drill string, travelling block, crown block and piston is supported except for the desired contact force between the drill bit and the for-Fig. 9 Main arrangement of CMC drilling equipment. ‘Since the gas spring will have a certain stiffness there will be a change in the force transmitted to the crown block: when the piston moves up the force is reduced and vice versa, To compensate for this variation extra hydraulic cylinders, so-called force equalizers, are added tothe sys- tem, see also [7], causing the effective spring stiffness of the passive system to be substantially lower, cally, with kya © 0 -> key ~ 0 then no disturbances from the heave motion would be transmitted to the drill- string. In practice, however, the remaining effective stifl- ness of the gas spring and the friction in the main cylinder will have a detrimental effect on the heave compensation, and act as disturbances that may cause the WOB to move ‘outside the specified tolerances. In the current work a load case scenario which is charac- terized by a combination of a short drillstring and a hard formation is examined, see Tables 3 and 4 Table 3 Considered load case ‘Seenario “Heave System in drilling mode] The heave is modeled ar an ideal sine curve Aza(t) = Aza-sin (32-1) with 7 = 128 and Az, ~ Lm Tomine] weight on Bit wBg = 10- gk WOR Table 4 Considered system, ‘ain | Single acing cylinder wih rod diameter cylinder | drog = 720mm, Kas = AGKN/m ‘Measured friction parameters for main cylinder aecording to Eq. (4) Fs = 23EN, Fo = 12kN 1% = 10mm/s Jy = 1OKN's/m, Cy = 200NTbar Dall “The length and wifiness string ae assumed constant Lps = 300m, kos = 208kN/m Formation Fx = 1000KN Tm Fig. 10 Passive heave compensation system. ration. This contact force is referred to as weight on bit (WO), A rough approximation on the variation of WOB, Awos, is Awon = Azn-kery ay ‘Where Azy is the heave motion of the platform and key is the effective spring stiffness between platform and for- mation, Identifying the stiffness of the gas spring, the drillstring and the formation contact, see Fig. Il, yields the following expression for ke, 1 hesy aay Ta * tas tr 768 {A simulation model similar to the one described in some detail in (7] was developed in SimulationX@to examine the importance of the main cylinder friction. Three dif- {erent friction regimes are investigated: 1, No fiction. 2. Reduced static friction according to Eq. (7) 3. Static friction according to (4) In Fig. 12 the main compensation parameter, WOB, is shown. Clearly, the improvement in performance when reducing the static ftiction is distinct but also quite mod- est as compared to the improvement obtained by remov- ing friction in the main cylinder alltogether. The fact is, that for large hydraulic cylinders used in heave compen- sation applications, the influence of the static friction as compared to the combined impact of Coulomb friction, viscous friction, pressure dependant friction and the stiff- ness of the gas spring is limited ‘The disturbances in the main cylinder forces are transmit- ted directly to the drillbit which is caused by the higherGown bk cmc] 4] = a lider Big, 11 Model of QE: desing nds oe ee va Vv Vv su Big, 12 WOD a func of ine fr dee! levels of friction in the main cylinder. eigenfzequency of the mechanical system as compared to the wave Irequeney. For a system with a longer and more flexible drillstzing and softer formation this impact could either be attenuated due to resonance between wave fre- quency and eigenfrequency or even low pass filered for very low eigentrequencies 5, CONCLUSIONS In this paper friction reduction in a hydraulic cylinder ‘with diameter, d = 125mm, is carried out by rotating the piston relative to the cylinder in situations where there is no relative axial velocity. Experimental work clearly show that the static friction is eliminated within a small interval around zero velocity in which a pure viscous be- havior is obtained, Outside this interval, regular Coulomb friction is present ‘Two different augmented models of Stribeck friction is put forward with the one described via Eq. (7) as the one that is clearly in best accordance with the measured data ‘The impact of cylinder friction is simulated on a time do- 769 ‘main simulation model of a crown block mounted com- pensated drilling machine. 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