An approach in reducing vibration in seawater hydraulic piston pumps for increased operational effectiveness and efficiency

The seawater hydraulic piston pump has been used in ocean engineering and has become a key power component for underwater equipment due to energy efficiency and being environment friendly. Water hydraulics possesses advantages of low environment pollution, non-flammable, lower oper-ating cost and so on, because it directly uses natural water as working medium instead of traditional mineral oil. It is more flexible in the underwater applications to build an open circuit system directly utilizing the seawater as working a medium and discharging drainage to the open surroundings without needing return hose and reservoir. These special characteristics make it widely used in underwater equip-ment, such as variable ballast system (VBS), bilge drainage system, high pressure water mist fire suppression system, and high pressure water jet propulsion system. With the missions of underwater equipment becoming increasingly complex and varied, such as military applications, inspection of underwater structures, exploration of unknown environ-ment, oceanographic observations, submarine rescue, under-water animal behaviour research, and so on, underwater equipment with better stability, higher reliability, lower vibration, and noise characteristics is strongly required.