ADRC for Automotive Radiator Pressure Pulse Test bench

What is it about?

When testing how well car radiators hold up under repeated pressure (a key part of checking their durability), problems with the radiator can throw off things like pressure and temperature in the test machine. This makes the test results less reliable. To fix this, researchers created a new control method called ADRC specifically for these pressure-test machines. First, they built a model of the test system’s hydraulic part, then developed the ADRC method using that model. They tested it on a real pressure-test machine—and found it worked better than two common older methods (PID and fuzzy PID). Even when the test’s pressure demands changed, ADRC kept track of the needed pressure more accurately and stayed steady, making radiator tests more trustworthy.

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Why is it important?

The research in this paper fills the gap of the Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) algorithm in the field of automotive radiator pressure pulse testing. It can actively suppress disturbances caused by faults, ensure the accuracy of tests at all times, and guarantee "only radiators with real fatigue resistance can be installed on vehicles" from the source. This research is not only targeted at "automotive radiator pressure test rigs"; its core idea — "establishing a mathematical model for hydraulic systems and improving control accuracy with a reduced-order ADRC algorithm" — has broad popularization value. Many industrial testing equipments (such as air conditioning heat exchanger pressure testing, hydraulic pipeline fatigue testing, etc.) rely on similar "hydraulic drive + pressure control" principles, and traditional control algorithms generally have the problem of weak anti-interference capability. The results of this study can provide references for the upgrading of control schemes for these equipments, promote the upgrade of testing equipments in more industrial fields from "barely usable" to "accurate and reliable", and indirectly advance the progress of testing technology in the entire manufacturing industry.