Study of the key problems in a water hydraulic piston pump and its applications

In recent years water hydraulic systems have become of major interest because of the human friendly and environmental safety aspects. The piston pump is one of the most frequently used hydraulic units in recent engineering techniques. In a water hydraulic piston pump, poor lubrication is more likely to happen than in a oil hydraulic one because of differences in properties between water and oil. There are some key problems, such as corrosive wear and erosion, which are briefly investigated in this paper. Many new materials have been developed, which give longer life expectancies in water without corrosion and erosion. Recently, a new type of seawater hydraulic piston pump with better suction characteristics had been developed at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Much of this research has concentrated on new materials, structure and experiments, which are also specially introduced in this paper.