Title:A journey of a compact digital valve development; from scratch to series productionAuthor(s):Thomas Zehetbauer, Andreas Plöckinger, Paul Foschum, Marvin Schell, Dieter LohmillerAbstract:Direct acting solenoid valves have its limits considering size and maximum dynamics. The company Lupold GmbH started a cooperation together with LCM to develop a digital hydraulic valve with integrated pressure relief function which is non-pressure equalised, direct actuated via solenoid and maximum nominal size within the limited constructional space. For a wide range of applications, the digital valve requires bidirectional operation and high dynamics along a certain pressure drop range up to 30 MPa. To find the perfect valve design a topology competition of the magnetic circuit including the demand on the valve geometry considering its dynamic behaviour was created. The geometries with lacks in required space, power losses and switching time were eliminated. Also, manually choices like feasibility in series production and manufacturing costs were considered during the evaluation process. The final valve geometry resulted in one of the world’s smallest direct acting and non-pressure equalised solenoid valves within a nominal flow rate of about 2.5 L/min @ 0.5 MPa pressure drop and maximum hydraulic switching times below 4 ms depending on pressure and flow direction.Booktitle:Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Digital Fluid Power, DFP22, September 19-20, 2022, Edinburgh, Scotland.Page Reference:15 page(s)Publishing:9/2022