Joint simulation and experimental verification of electromechanical-hydraulic of hydraulic excavator working device

Abstract

To rigorously evaluate the electromechanical-hydraulic coupling performance of a hydraulic excavator’s working device under authentic operating loads, this study presents a field-data-driven co-simulation framework applied to a 20-ton backhoe hydraulic excavator. Full-scale digging experiments were conducted at the Liuzhou test site, where boom, arm, and bucket cylinder pressures, together with joint angles, were synchronously sampled to back-calculate the real-time excavation resistance. This measured resistance was then imported as an external load into a three-dimensional dynamic model established in ADAMS and bidirectionally coupled with the electro-hydraulic system model developed in AMESim. For three representative digging depths: surface digging, 1 M digging, and 2 M digging, the maximum discrepancy between simulated and measured cylinder pressures was 6 MPa (about 15%), while the correlation coefficients of the pressure traces ranged from 0.907 to 0.975, showing excellent agreement. The observed deviations are primarily attributed to load uncertainty; nevertheless, the proposed model accurately captures the dynamic interaction between the electro-hydraulic system and the mechanical system, offering a reliable experimental foundation for performance assessment and digital-twin applications of hydraulic excavator working device.