Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Additive Manufacturing Parts for Sonar and Camera housing of a Subsea Cleaning and Inspection Robot
Submission Author:
Valter Estevão Beal , BA , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Davi Vasconcelos, Diego Vieira Barini, Valter Estevão Beal, Juan Carlos Romero Albino
Presenter: Valter Estevão Beal
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-0353
Abstract
Vessels, platforms and other equipment used for oil and gas field exploration and production are prone to work as support to living organisms, especially on tropical and subtropical seas. Nevertheless, fouling from these marine life (seaweeds, barnacles, corals and others) reduce energy efficiency when moving these structures. Also, they can hide corrosion and other defects that can lead to leakages and catastrophic failures. Additionally, when moving from one sea to other sea they can carry sea life and create unbalanced threatens to local sea life. Therefore cleaning of the hulls and structures is necessary. As it is a risk and costly operation, there is an industry movement to robotize the cleaning/removing of the hull fouling. On a robotic solution under development, a camera is needed for supervision of the process and obstacles identification. A Sonar is also added to help the obstacles identification under the water. The first choice was making the supports and housing all made from plates and blanks from milled aluminum alloy. The design team proposed a new solution made entirely from plastic and using Additive Manufacturing, AM. The result considerable reduced the weight to less than 75% in air and the number of parts, especially bolts. To achieve this optimization, the team used topology optimization and AM design guidelines to propose a design easier to assembly and that can withstand the external pressure of 5 bar and other loads.
Keywords
Additive manufacturing, Topology optimization, Robotics
