The paper presents a model of the sealing process in kinematic pairs of hydraulic cylinders with elastic seals and an analytical form of this model based on the results obtained by the author. The prepared model distinguishes rheological parameters, allowing one to determine the criteria of a correct course of the sealing process and to forecast the operating time for the seals. Exemplary test results and their analysis are presented, too. It results from the analysis that leakage efficiency through the seal is dependent on the sealing pressure determined by the parameter 8, and it is unstable in relation to this parameter. Basing on this fact, the author determined conditions of hydrodynamic convection of the sealing and elaborated an analytical model of the sealing process including roughness of the piston rod surface as well as the seal flexibility.

A formulation developed at the Laboratory of Mechanical Engineering allows robust and efficient simulation of large and complex multibody systems. Simulators of cars, excavators and other systems have been developed showing that real-time simulations are possible even when facing demanding manoeuvres. Hydraulic actuators are presented in many industrial applications of multibody systems, like in the case of the heavy machinery field. When simulating the dynamics of this kind of problems that combine multibody dynamics and hydraulics, two different approaches are common: to resort to kinematically guide the variable length of the actuator, thus avoiding the need to consider the dynamics of the hydraulic system; or to perform a multi-rate integration of both subsystems if a more detailed description of the problem is required, for example, when the objective of the study is to optimize the pump control. This work addresses the inclusion of hydraulic actuators dynamics in the above-mentioned self-developed multibody formulation, thus leading to a unified approach. An academic example serves to compare the efficiency, accuracy and ease of implementation of the simplified (kinematic guidance), multi-rate and unified approaches. Such a comparison is the main contribution of the paper, as it may serve to provide guidelines on which approach to select depending on the problem characteristics.