AbstractsEngineering

In the wake of several dramatic incidents where cargo ships were lost at sea due to corrosion related structural failure, spilling large amounts of oil, the regulations regarding corrosion preventions have been tightened. Specifically regulations regarding painting and painted surfaces in a ship’s sea water ballast tanks are stricter than ever before. Hence it is now mandatory to round off steel edges before applying paint to ensure long lasting protection against corrosion, a process named edge preparation. Therefore the main objective of this thesis is: “conceptualise, design, build and test a prototype robotic edge rounding system”. The objective is attained by successfully completing three phases: Conceptual, Implementation and Experimental phase. The final concept is found by performing a trade-off between various working principles based on the set requirements and working constraints. The optimal concept is determined to be a quarter radius end-mill on a passive compliant spindle, mounted on a position controlled six degree of freedom robotic arm. The implementation of the proposed concept focusses on the synthesis of a suitable control law using geometric algebra and the mechanical implementation of the passive compliant milling tool. The result is a compact spindle with two sliding axis providing the needed compliance to contact a stiff workpiece. Two point contact bearings enable precise relative positioning of the mill and the edge to be rounded. Furthermore a feedback motion controller is implemented, allowing the robot to adaptively follow planar contours in space. Validation of the proposed solution is obtained by way of full scale experimentation with a test platform on cut-outs in steel profiles. Results show that the chosen concept is capable of correctly rounding variously shaped contours under realistic conditions. Advisors/Committee Members: Delgado Lopes, G.A., Kistemaker, J., Glijnis, P.C..