SUSU scientists are developing and setting up production of fluid power servo-drives with hydrostatic guideways. With the support from the Chelyabinsk Region Government, a team of scientists is developing modern domestic software for controlling a fluid power servo-drive using a personal computer. In October 2023, the project team submitted two applications for registration of their software.
The goal of the joint project of SUSU and Ural Engineering Center LLC, which is being implemented under the Ural Interregional Research and Educational Center (UIREC), is the complete import substitution of the fluid power servo-drive design, including all components and software, by 2025. The manufacturing of servo-drives will be deployed at the premises of the industrial partner in the city of Chelyabinsk.
The fluid power servo-drive is used in bench test equipment for vibration testing of various products with high frequencies and high forces, including aircraft, engine, rocket, military, automotive, and building structures for various purposes. The design includes three main components: a hydraulic cylinder with hydrostatic guideways, a piston-rod position sensor and an electrohydraulic power amplifier. Until 2021, such structures and all their components were imported from abroad.
The project for the development of a hardware and software system for control, adjustment and diagnostics of the fluid power servo-drive is supported by the Government of the Chelyabinsk Region and is being implemented simultaneously with the project for the development of an electrohydraulic power amplifier and a position sensor.
“In 2019-2021, as part of a major project under the Russian Government Resolution No. 218, Ural Engineering Center together with South Ural State University created an import-substituting design and deployed high-tech manufacturing of fluid power cylinders with hydrostatic guideways. A machine-building shop for the manufacture of such fluid power cylinders, which have no analogues in the domestic machine-building industry, is already in operation. At the end of 2021, the design of the fluid power cylinders was optimized at the expense of the UIREC grant, and in the first half of 2022, at the expense of own funds of Ural Engineering Center, a set of design and technological documentation for the new fluid power cylinders was developed and a prototype was manufactured,” says project manager Dmitry Ardashev, Professor of the Department of Machine Building Automation Technology of the Polytechnic Institute of SUSU.
The development of the hardware and software system is carried out jointly with the Department of Electronic Computing Machines of the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science of SUSU. Currently, the team is developing the interface and architecture of the future system. Independent program modules for exchanging data with the microcontroller have already been developed. These two programs will be registered in the near future as applications for computer program registration certificates have been submitted.
The launch of manufacturing of the domestic fluid power servo-drive is scheduled for 2026. Import substitution of this device will ensure the country’s technological sovereignty in the development and creation of unique test benches for testing products for strategic sectors of the Russian industry.