Abstract
Wall Climbing Robots (WCRs) have found extensive applications in the past decade in numerous engineering fields, however, the design of efficient adhesion mechanism for robots climbing on concrete surfaces remains a challenge and attracts research attention. This paper proposes various designs of magnetic adhesion mechanism for concrete surfaces and investigates the adhesion force and payload capacities each design would accommodate for wall climbing robot applications. Permanent magnet is used as the magnetic adhesion mechanism and a yoke structure helps in holding the magnets and influences the adhesion characteristics of the mechanism. The effect of various structural designs of adhesion mechanisms on the adhesion force and payload capacity on the concrete surface is studied in this work. The adhesion forces against the different standoff distances which comprise the gap between the magnet and the concrete surface are also investigated therein. The results show that the developed adhesion mechanism can be applied for concrete walls generating the required adhesion forces and providing a better insight in choosing the best configuration, number of magnets and standoff distances for the design of adhesion mechanism against the required payload of WCR.
Highlights
The growth in civilization and the thirst of human to urbanize his standard of living has led to the construction of luxurious and sky-high tall buildings
An adhesion mechanism using permanent magnets has been developed for robots climbing on reinforced concrete walls
The effect of various structural designs of adhesion mechanisms on the adhesion force and payload capacity on the concrete surface reinforced with metal rods is studied in this work
Summary
The growth in civilization and the thirst of human to urbanize his standard of living has led to the construction of luxurious and sky-high tall buildings. There are various adhesion mechanisms such as vacuum suction, magnetic attraction etc, that can be employed for a robot to adhere to the surface of the wall. The proper design of the magnets and their placements yield optimal results in terms of efficient adhering forces between the wall surface and the robot. Various existing adhesion mechanisms and wall climbing robots are analyzed such as the one by Yanagimura et al [1], who propose a method by which an MAV (Micro Air Vehicle) can travel in air without any involvement of propulsion systems For this to achieve, they designed and developed a magnetic adhesion system which consists of a switch, a winch with servomotor and a rope/cable, a shaft with spring coiled around and a magnet attached to the end of the shaft. The N52 grade magnet is chosen as it is the highest grade of magnet available in the market and has high penetrating magnetic flux which caters for the intended purpose
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