Design and Test of Intelligent Inspection and Replacement System of TBM Excavation Tools

摘要

In order to solve the problems of the health and safety of the manual tool change during the excavation process of the TBM and to save the long maintenance time causing the high productivity and associated costs, the paper puts forward the scheme of that advanced intelligent control techniques such as flexible robots and multi-axis robots can be used to realize unmanned and smart inspection and excavation tools replacement. The scheme includes a snake robot for inspection of excavation chamber and a multi-axis robot for the replacement of the disc cutters. Based on this scheme, a set of prototypes and experimental devices for verifying key technologies have been designed, and the experiments of the prototypes on the experimental devices have accomplished. The experimental results show the scheme that the inspection robot and the replacement robot can be used to replace the manpower in the TBM maintenance work is feasible. Through the application of smart devices and new technologies, the technical level of the TBM can be effectively improved, and the health impact on the operators can be reduced.