Advantages of Hydraulics – Power Transmission through Fluids

Hydraulics is the transmission of forces and pressures through fluids. This concept is technically complex but offers numerous advantages. For some tasks, hydraulics is the only practical solution. Due to many types of components, hydraulic systems can today be designed to be very extensive and powerful.

Primary Advantages of Hydraulic Power Transmission

• Flexible Positioning of All Actuators
• Generation of Very High Forces

The transmission of forces through fluid-filled lines has the advantage that these can be shaped arbitrarily. Regardless of whether the line is angled or even designed as a flexible hose, the effect remains the same. Once pressurized, the force is evenly distributed to every point in the hydraulic system. The hydraulic pump and the actuators can thus be positioned arbitrarily relative to each other. This is not possible with mechanical systems, for example, with chain drives or levers, and makes hydraulic systems very compact and adaptable to virtually any installation location.

The most important advantage of hydraulics is its ability to generate extremely strong forces

Starting from the classic configuration of master and slave cylinders, the force on the latter increases proportionally to the difference in area to the master cylinder. If the slave cylinder has twice the diameter of the master cylinder, the effective pressure surface and the force with which the master cylinder extends quadruple. Although the extension length is reduced to the same extent, this can easily be compensated by a check valve and the repeated retraction and extension of the master cylinder. At a ratio of 1:3, the force increase is already ninefold. While force amplification is possible in pneumatics using a similar principle, the transmission of forces through gases always involves significant compression losses. This makes it inefficient for generating high compressive forces. Pneumatics, however, has other strengths. For example, it is significantly faster than hydraulics.

Secondary Advantages of Hydraulic Systems

Due to their physical properties, hydraulic systems can offer further advantages:

• Stepless Control of Transmitted Speeds and Forces
• High Efficiency

Hydraulic systems utilize the physical property of fluid incompressibility. This property makes hydraulic systems precisely controllable at all times. Regardless of whether the acting force is provided by a hand-operated cylinder or an electric hydraulic pump, the movement of the actuators can be controlled with millimeter precision.

Since no energy is lost through compression during hydraulic operation, these systems have high efficiency. Only heat losses from the connected pump motor or internal friction in the system must be accepted. Furthermore, hydraulic systems operate very efficiently.