Development of magnetic adhesion based climbing robot for non-destructive testing

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of key design parameters involved in optimizing the adhesion force achieved from rare earth neodymium magnets. In order to generate high adhesion force by using minimum number of permanent magnets, criteria such as distance between multiple magnets, thickness of flux concentrator have been evaluated by implementing Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Results show that adhesion force increases with increased distance between magnets and by using thick magnetic flux concentrator. A prototype robot has been designed to validate the simulation results. Experiment vs simulation study presents similar results. The robot is controlled remotely via Bluetooth communication protocol and provides umbilical free access to the robot operator.