a pressure vessel inspection robot

 

 

XIAO Hua, ZHANG Hui, JIN Jing juan

 

(School of Power and Mechanical Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China)

 

 

Abstract: Aimed at the artificial safety problems in the non destructive testing tasks of a kind of pressure vessel, the features (narrow entrance、large interior space、the bad internal environment) of the pressure vessel were analyzed and the singularity、load capacity、workspace、the way and time of installation of the robot were studied. A kind of robot with 6 degrees of freedom was designed by arm wrist separateness principle. The calculation and simulation were executed by Matlab software for the workspace of the robot and the process of its working was described through threedimensional modeling. The load capacity、workspace、the way and time of installation of the robot were tested by the physical prototype experiment. The results indicate that the configuration of the robot meets the requirements of the workspace. The robot can successfully complete the inspection tasks with 20kg instruments, and a single person can complete the installation tasks safely and the time of installation is less than half an hour. The robot successfully designed can ensure the safety of personnel .This configuration method provides a reference for the design of such robots.

 

Key words: pressure vessel; robot; configuration design; workspace