This paper considers the issue of the simultaneous charging of multiple pneumatic actuator chambers using branch pipes. A branch pipe shows complex properties even in steady state flows. Therefore, before carrying out calculations on an unsteady flow, its static characteristics had to be known by experiment. In this paper, experiments and simulations are carried out for the pressure charging process using a basic model of branch pipe system composed of two pneumatic chambers and one branch pipe. Simulation algorithm was made based on the staggered lattices for space discretisation and the upwind differences for time discretisation. The relative differences between the simulated and the experimented pressures in the chambers are less than five percent, which is observed only in a short time just after the start of the charging.

View full abstract