Analysis and Design of an In-line Pump as a Thruster for Swimming Robots
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With the development of science and technology, human labors have been greatly liberated from tedious and dangerous work. In recent several decades, different kinds of robots start playing important roles in people’s lives. Among those robots, the swimming robot is special and still in the beginning of its development. Swimming robots have been served in many aspects. However, establishing precise control system is always a challenge for the design and use of swimming robots. Unlike robot arms that are well understood, mechanism of thrust generators is more complicated and their performance is unpredictable compared with DC motors. The purpose of this project is to design a thrust generator which is amenable to feedback control. When the feedback signal is the angular velocity of the impeller, the relationship between angular velocity and generated thrust force should be clear and reliable. Thrust force can be calculated by the flow-rate of the pump. Hence, finding a relationship between flow-rate and angular velocity is of the first priority. In this thesis, a new pump is designed and analyzed based on the IL-500P pump that is currently served as a thrust generator in RiSYS swimming robot. Then, the mathematical model simulation and finite element analysis are implemented for its performance.
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Deng, Hankun. "Analysis and Design of an In-line Pump as a Thruster for Swimming Robots." (2018) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105766.