Multphysics Coupling Study On A Small Mobile Robot In Rough Terrain

With the developments in science and technology, especially the rapid development ofmultphysics coupling analysis in recent years, the research of robot technology is deepening dayby day, and the research for mobile robot on uneven terrain become the key content. Thisresearch is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant60775060，called Research on the approach of the trafficability with lower energy-consumption for mobilerobot in rough terrain and Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of HigherEducation under Grant20102304110006called The Mechanism of Robot Perceptive Wheel andthe Structure Optimization in Terms of Multi-physics Couplings. The trafficability for differentconfigurations of reconfigurable mobile robot on uneven terrain is mainly studied in this work;also the Multphysics coupling influence on mobile robot wheel is investigated. Finally, the bestdesign for mobile robot wheel structure is found through optimization analysis.Firstly, the trafficability is simulated for six symmetric configurations and twonon-symmetric configurations of the mobile robot on typical uneven terrain using the method ofthe virtual prototype. Changes in the pitch roll and yaw angles were investigated through themotion process simulation with ADAMS software. Compared with normal configuration,advantages and disadvantages for different configurations mobile robot on uneven terrain areresearched. According to the design demand, Different configurations mobile robot is choice.Doing the experiment for different configurations of the mobile robot verify that simulationresult is correct.Secondly, if the wheel volume is so small, the structure of the wheel is complex; the heatgenerated by motor in the work process, can not be transmitted out immediately as thetemperature of the wheel is increased. Also the different materials making up the mobile robotwheel have different thermal expansion coefficients; therefore thermal stress influence on wheelstructure is investigated. Considering the fact that the robot speed is usually very slow, everypoint in the motion process is taken as a static process. Using the normal configuration of therobot, the motion process is divided into200points and thermal-structure coupling and structureanalysis is done for every point to get the maximum stress and strain in the whole process usingADAMS simulation data as boundary conditions in Finite Element Analysis. Finally,the motor electromagnetic influence for small robot wheel thermal-structure analysis is considered andmulti-physics coupling is analyzed preliminarily.Then， same process was repeated for caster-camber configuration and caster-asymmetricconfiguration and results were compared with that of normal configuration. Results revealed thatthermal stress influence on the robot wheel structure is significant; also certain design criteria forreconfiguration were obtained.Finally, the mobile robot wheel is optimized through ANSYS second development with VCand a set of optimal design parameters are got for structure design. The process of parameterizedmodeling, thermal-structure coupling analysis and optimization analysis, shows as softwareinterface through VC calling APDL language, and this makes the whole process of optimizingmore simple.