The present paper details advances attained in the modelling and simulation of axial piston pumps. The simulation environment is AMESim and new in-house developed submodels allow a quantitative appraisal of exchanged forces inside the pump. Care is devoted to the analysis and modelling of the port plate geometry that significantly contributes to the fl ow ripple. An advantage of the proposed simulation approach lies in the fact that pump geometry features are accounted “parametrically”, this contributing flexibility while assessing and comparing performance of different pump designs. Experimental studies are also presented and critical analysis of results while serving the purpose of validating specific aspects of predictive simulations also allow to stress the limits involved in the modelling phase.