Challenges and Solutions for High-Speed Aviation Piston Pumps: A Review

As a core power component, aviation piston pumps are widely used in aircraft hydraulic systems. The piston pump’s power-to-weight ratio is extremely crucial in the aviation industry, and the “ceiling effect” of the PV value (product of compressive stress and linear velocity) limits the piston pump’s ability to increase working pressure. Therefore, increasing the piston pump’s speed has been a real breakthrough in terms of further enhancing the power-to-weight ratio. However, the piston pump’s design faces several challenges under the extreme operating conditions at high speeds. This study reviews several problems aviation axial piston pumps face under high-speed operating conditions, including friction loss, cavitation, cylinder overturning, flow pressure pulsation, and noise. It provides a detailed description of the research state of the art of these problems and potential solutions. The axial piston pump’s inherent sliding friction pair, according to the report, considerably restricts further increasing of its speed and power-to-weight ratio. With its mature technology and deep research base, the axial piston pump will continue to dominate the aviation pumps. Furthermore, breaking the limitation of the sliding friction pair on speed and power density, thus innovating a novel structure of the piston pump, is also crucial. Therefore, this study also elaborates on the working principle and development process of the two-dimensional (2D) piston pump, which is a representative of current high-speed pump structure innovation.