Experimental and numerical evaluation of a rubber seal in a vacuum suction pad for an automatic mooring system

Abstract

The utilization of automatic mooring systems is under extensive interest with the growing technological demands for autonomous ships and smart ports. A vacuum suction pad with a rubber seal, which endures external loads to the moored ship, such as mooring forces, is a critical element in an automatic mooring system. To develop a high-performance automatic mooring system, a vacuum suction pad and a rubber seal need to be thoroughly designed, manufactured, and evaluated. This work demonstrates a protocol for evaluating the performance of a vacuum suction pad through both simulation and experimental testing. Uniaxial tensile testing was conducted to understand the mechanical behavior of a rubber seal. Stabilized stress-strain curves were utilized to find an optimal strain energy density function model and to extract material parameters for 3D finite element method (FEM) simulations. The FEM simulations were conducted to calculate strain distributions, contact status and the maximum load capacity, and along with the FEM simulation results, experimental evaluations of the vacuum suction pad were designed and conducted against static and cyclic loads. Based on the simulation and experimental results, we can conclude that the vacuum suction pad can maintain the stable suction at least up to 25 kN suitable for the use in automatic mooring systems.