A Novel Robotic System for Inner Wall Derusting and Grinding of Pressure Pipelines

Abstract

Inner wall derusting and grinding of pressure pipelines are important work for their safety operation. However, up to date, this important work are still in difficulty, the corresponding methods are still very limited and cannot meet the requirements of practical industry applications. Therefore, the aim of this work is to investigate the practical inner wall derusting and grinding methods of the pressure pipelines. A novel robotic system for inner wall derusting and grinding of the pressure pipelines, which mainly includes a tracked mobile robot, a derusting and grinding module, and a control module, is developed. The tracked mobile robot is used to provide the driving force of the system movement. The derusting and grinding module is designed on the basis of a DC motor. The control module is used to control the motion state of the robot and the whole derusting and grinding process. Inner wall derusting and grinding experiments of the pressure pipelines with outer diameter of 159mm are carried out. The research results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed system.

Design and Analysis of Drive Mechanism of Piping Robot

“…Ren, et al review the screw-type drives in piping robots and present their advantages, but the force analysis is not detailed. Some grinding piping robots have been developed [3,22]; however the design and analysis of drive units are not discussed in detail.…”

“…Because of limited dimension of pipes, it is difficult to perform operations inside a pipe for human operators. Therefore, piping robots are demanded to carry sensors and equipment to perform specific operations in pipes such as pipe inspection, cleaning, grinding, and other tasks [3][4][5]. The drive mechanism is very important to drive these robots inside pipes.…”