Digital-switching fluidic power supply and hydrostatic transmission with regenerative brake

and all cylinders are rigidly linked via end to end in serial mode, and every cylinder has its own valve assembly that has 3 switchable states:

• one state of shortcutting 2 fluid ports and two states of driving towards each opposite direction of reciprocation.

and a set of valve assembly has 4 ports for external interface:

• 2 for cylinder, plus 2 for in/out flow. In a ready linked cylinder-train, the 2 ports for in/out flow can render different imagined polarities A & B, for example, arbitrarily but coherently define “flow in to port A then flow out from port B” represents for rod up motion, then the rod will move down if flow in to port B then flow out from port A.

and the valve assembly can be simply a spool valve with 4 ports and the above-designated 3 ways or states, or comprise multiple pieces proper combination of all non-spool valves or partial non-spool valves plus partial spool valves, as long as sure equivalence.

and in a cylinder-train, all same polarity ports of valve assemblies array must connected together to form collective hoses or pipes busbar, in purpose that all cylinder rods possible dynamic thrust will always align towards same transient orientation and never cancel each other during run time, so as for synchronous reciprocal motion.

and in regular condition of AC fluid power coupling to the 2 busbar ports of cylinder-train, any aforementioned 3 states can also be conceptually consolidated as dual or binary digital macro states of the served cylinder:

• OFF=shortcutting the 2 local ports, so as to exclude the local force contribution or consumption on the collective total force;
• ON=simultaneously channeling 2 partial loop passages to the 2 local ports, so as to synchronously respond to the collective reciprocation. Therefore, the cylinder-train runtime valid total piston area can be adjusted by bit-masking switches vector of the control byte(s) of valve assemblies array, and the byte length equals 1 plus the integer part of quotient of cylinders pieces divided by 8.

and such built cylinder-train shall be used in a fluidic AC pressure transformer in either primary side or secondary side, so as to get the desirable pressure by respective linear or non-linear controllability. If it in primary side, the secondary side needs a proper sized cylinder for regulated pressure output;

• else if in secondary side, then itself is used as output, however a primary reciprocal mover or an proper sized primary cylinder can be used as input.

and though this can be abstractly regarded as methodic invention, its corollary instantiation is just middleware of an utilizable apparatus. So let claim naturally extend to its middleware. Hereto the lengthy description of subject method independent claim is completed by previous total 8 itemizations.

The system of regulated pressure fluid power supply that can tolerate wide change of input pressure, with application of previously claimed method #1 when building the kernel, comprising the core cylinder-train matched with valve assemblies array, a controller, output pressure sampling module, pressure comparator, feedback fluid circuit, hydraulic accumulator, overflow valve, the heading fluidic DC-AC inversion module, the tailing fluidic AC-DC rectification module. The system must pursue constant out pressure as controller's objective, by either hardware or software algorithmic implementation, though very precision result may be hard to attain.

The system of digital hydromechanical transmission or powertrain with regenerative brake, by application of afore claimed method #1 when building the kernel, comprising a central computer-based controller, the core cylinder-train matched with fluidic valve assemblies array, final cylinder, straight coupler or VFD-purposed spool valve coupler that connects cylinder-train & final cylinder, rotary to reciprocal motion converter, reciprocal to rotary motion converter, the heading speed reducer, the optional tailing speeder as last drive, and the regenerative module. VFD stands for Variable Frequency Driver, here refers to fluid VFD.

and the regenerative module shares the same core transmission, via which twice usages, firstly by reverse usage, it transfers inertial energy to the dedicated storage hydraulic accumulator at frontend, thenafter by forward usage of the same transmission, releases energy in storage to vehicular wheels via final drive at backend.

and the regenerative module comprises a set of fluidic rectifier, a bypass valve aka shortcut valve, a hydraulic accumulator, an air-breathable tank, a 4/3-way spool direction valve, and a piezometer aka pressure sensor installed on accumulator.

and the brain aka the controller takes care of all necessary routine threads, including but not limited to:

• gear-shift responses, cylinder-train bits settings, data acquisition, signaling, actuation of valves, regenerative brake management, On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) and relevant events logging.
• Hereto the description of subject system or apparatus independent claim is completed by previous total 4 itemizations.