Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Dimensional synthesis of an Inspection Robot for SG tube-sheet

  • Kuan Zhang (State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Jizhuang Fan (State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Tian Xu (State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Yubin Liu (State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Zhenming Xing (State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Biying Xu (State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Jie Zhao (State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology)
  • Received : 2023.04.07
  • Accepted : 2024.02.17
  • Published : 2024.07.25
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Abstract

To ensure the operational safety of nuclear power plants, we present a Quadruped Inspection Robot that can be used for many types of steam generators. Since the Inspection Robot relies on the Holding Modules to grip the tube-sheet, it can be regarded as a hybrid robot with variable configurations, switching between 4-RRR-RR, 3-RRR-RR, and two types of 2-RRR-RR, and the variable configurations bring a great challenge to dimensional synthesis. In this paper, the kinematic model of the Inspection Robot in multiple configurations is established, and the analytical solution is given. The workspace mapping is analyzed by the solution-space, and the workspace of multiple configurations is decomposed into the workspace of 2-RRR to reduce the analysis complexity, and the workspace calculation is simplified by using the envelope rings. The optimization problem of the manipulator is transformed into the calculation of the shortest contraction length of the swing leg. The switching performance of the Inspection Robot is evaluated by stride-length, turning-angle, and workspace overlap-ratio. The performance indexes are classified and transformed based on the proportions and variation trends of dimensional parameters to reduce the number of optimization objective functions, and Pareto optimal solutions are obtained using an intelligent optimization algorithm.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO.U2013214) and the Self-Planned Task (NO. SKLRS202001A03) of the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System (HIT).

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