Design of an additively manufactured hydraulic directional spool valve: an industrial case study

An industrial case study of an additively manufactured hydraulic spool valve that was designed in close collaboration with our industrial partner Wandfluh AG is presented herein. An existing conventional valve design was redesigned for laser powder bed fusion while considering the current functional and technical requirements. The entire development process is described based on real world requirements, considering the manufacturing and post-processing constraints. The final design was manufactured, tested, and compared with the conventionally manufactured valve. The pressure drop was reduced by 60% through the valve redesign, and a weight reduction of 50% was achieved. This study is concluded by reflecting the development process and identifying potential, learnings, and challenges that can be transferred to other hydraulic components. The importance of generating a large variety of concepts in the divergent design generation phase and performing computational fluid dynamics simulations to assess the potential of these concepts are highlighted.