Experimental study of automatic rivet feeding system of robot automatic drilling & riveting

GONG Hui， ZHU Bai-rong， FANG Qiang
（Department of the Mechanical Engineering， Zhejiang University， Hangzhou 310027， China）

Abstract： In order to solve the problems that it's hard to send rivets to the automatic drilling & riveting machine in the assembly of aircraft， an automatic rivet feeding system was introduced which can deliver rivets for the robot automatic drilling & riveting end-performer. A pipe was used to send the rivets from rivet feeding system to rivet insert machine， the rivets were easily stuck in the delivering pipe when they were delivered because of the air pressure or minimum bending radius and other reasons， the rivets in the pipe were analyzed and calculated on the structure， stress and motion state with the knowledge of fluid mechanics， the necessary conditions were obtained in which the rivets could be delivered smoothly， like minimum bending radius and minimum air pressure. Finally，the results by experiments validate the feasibility of rivet pneumatic delivering in a pipe.
Key words： assembly of aircraft; rivet feeding system; minimum air pressure of feeding