What do we use hydraulics for?

Hydraulics are used in many circumstances but the most common area is in construction. When you walk past a building site, you will doubtless see a large number of vehicles working loudly. These machines are required to move and place tons of rubble, Earth and construction materials every day. The common factor that allows them to do this is the use of hydraualics. They are probalby powered using a Hydraulic Power Pack from hydraproducts.co.uk.

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Hydraulics work by using an incompressible fluid. The fluid enters at one end and applies a force to the other. To put it in simple terms, if one end is pushed up, the other will do the opposite and go down. The amount of force that the fluid exerts is so impressive that if the design of the mechanism is good a machine is able to lift huge amounts of material with a minimum of power required and effort.

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Simple hydraulic systems use a small cylinder. However, this can limit the ability of the system to move the required object. The cylinder fills with liquid and creates the force, and moves the object. More power can be applied if a pump is used. The pump is able to move more liquid quicker and to a greater extent. The pump will also have a reservoir of liquid available to it.  One of the most common uses of this system is the wing flaps and rudders on a large plane such as the Airbus 380.