Experimental and numerical study of vortex gripper with a diversion body

Abstract

This article introduces a new vortex gripper with a diversion body. Vortex gripper, as a pneumatic non-contact handling device, can generate lifting force to hold a workpiece without any contact. In order to predict the characteristics of this new vortex gripper, including pressure distribution on the upper surface of the workpiece, lifting force, supporting stiffness, and flowrate, a computational fluid dynamics study has been carried out. In the vortex cup, air swirling flow is a complex turbulent one; so Reynolds stress model (RSM) was used to describe internal air swirling flow. In addition, an experiment was carried out to study the characteristics of the vortex gripper. When compared with the experimental results, the reliability of numerical simulation results by RSM was verified. The vortex gripper with a diversion body could generate greater lifting force when compared with those designed by Xin et al. with the same air consumption. Therefore, the efficiency of the vortex gripper is improved.