Hydraulics Essay

Hydraulics are basically a means of sending forces and movements from one point to another by liquid which is free of gas and so is therefore incompressible.

The other reasonable benefit of this system is that pressure = force divided by area. This means that if the slave cylinder at the working end has twice the surface area on top of the cylinder than that of the master cylinder at the working end has twice the force but only travels half the distance. This means of generating a mechanical benefit whilst sending the force to a point remote from where it is applied makes it extremely useful.

Hydraulics is used in aeroplanes, cars, boats and also a large amount of constructional machines.

Car Hydraulics

A positive displacement pump (which could be a; gear, valve or a piston pump) is driven by a prime mover (eg. Electrical motor or engine) it sucks fluid from reservoir and delivers oil to system. During loading a resistance to flow creates the pressure which is utilised to do the work through cylinder for linear motion or through hydraulic motor for rotary motion, direction of flow is changed with help of direction control valve and system pressure is regulated by pressure control valve.

Aeroplane hydraulics

Most of the aircraft mechanical controls are powered by hydraulic pressure. (Aircraft in the future may rely less and less on hydraulics and more on electrical control.) Since the hydraulics is the "blood line" of the aircraft, it is important to ensure that the lines are safe from damage and leaks. Therefore, most aircraft have 2 or 3 redundant hydraulic systems. Usually the flight controls are powered by 2 redundant systems so that the loss of one hydraulic system will not cause that flight control to be inoperative.

Each hydraulic system has a Reservoir which collects all returned