Design of Permanent-Magnet Tracks for A Ship Hull Inspection Robot

The present study aims to design and analysis of the permanent magnetic adhesion mechanism for a ship hull inspection robot. Various types of inspection robots and cleaning robots with different modules and adhesion systems have been reviewed. Due to the working environment and the hull materials used in ships, which are mostly steel, a permanent magnetic adhesion system has been selected for this robot. The magnetic circuit design and calculation of adhesion forces play a vital role in the system reliability and payload capacity of the robot. The static and dynamic forces related to different orientations of the robot on vertical wall are extracted by corresponding equations. One of the important parameters in the design of this type of adhesion system is the air gap. To optimize this parameter, experimental tests and simulations using magnetostatic analysis in ANSYS software have been performed.