Structure Design And Analysis Of An Amphibious Spherical Robot

Spherical Robot, which could move in omni-direction with the help of its compact structure and flexible movement, was an important branch of the Mobile Robot. On the basis of this concept, an amphibious spherical robot was designed. Then, with the help of analysis, simulation and experiment, the mechanical structure of the robot was optimized through using dynamics and hydrodynamics, which simultaneously verifies the correctness and feasibility of this design.Firstly, based on contrastive analysis of the structural characteristics of BYSQ-2, under terrestrial movement criteria, the structure design of this new-type amphibious spherical robot was accomplished, with key components’strength checked. Then the entire allocation was verified with the stability theory of float.Secondly, the terrestrial dynamics and the underwater dynamics of this robot were separately computed with Lagrange’s Equation and Newton’s law of motion, and ADAMS simulation environment as well as MATLAB was used to analyze its terrestrial dynamics. Then the relationship between its structural parameters and dynamic performance was summarized.Thirdly, the hydrodynamic equations of the flow in a curved pipe were deduced with fluid dynamics. Then the viscous flow in curved rectangular ducts with different section dimension and curvature radius was simulated numerically under different flow patterns with the use of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics). The variation of the secondary flow intensity and viscous resistance along with the changing parameters of curved ducts was intensively studied with consideration of the centrifugal force, drawing the conclusion that the hydraulic loss of a curved duct, whose aspect ratio was0.75, was the lowest, and then the flow structure of the fluid in this curved duct was analyzed.Finally, on the basis of flow similarity theory, according to the Reynolds criterion, a simulated experiment was designed and conducted to measure the vortex intensity of the outlet section in pipe flow, with a vorticity probe and a manometer used. Thus, the correctness of the simulation was verified, finding an effective way to fluid experiments under limited condition.