For the calculation of the thermal behavior of
hydraulic systems, network models with lumped parameters have
become established in the last decades. Here, the calculation of
mass and energy conservation is carried out via time-dependent
differential equations with very small time steps. For complex
systems, such as the entire drive system of a mobile machine, this
leads to very high simulation times, which are not suitable for
parameter studies and optimizations. In this paper, an efficient
computational approach to determine system temperatures in
thermal equilibrium is presented, which significantly reduces the
simulation time by up to a factor of 100 while maintaining
almost the same accuracy. The new method is validated by a
comparison with a classical, i.e. time-dependent, simulation using
an elementary hydraulic circuit as an example. An extensive
statistical analysis is made by varying the dynamic process
conditions by different volume flow curves in order to prove
the accuracy and the reduction of the simulation time.