The Development And Drive Characteristics Experimental Study Of High Strength Water Hydraulic Artificial Muscle

Underwater robot is an indispensable tool for marine development, the Underwater Manipulator is one of the key technologies. Now, the drive of the Underwater Manipulator is hydraulic cylinder or hydraulic motor. Although the technology is relatively mature, there are still some problems, for example, piston rod eroded by water, environmental pollution and so on. With the development of artificial muscles, it is proposed that the water hydraulic artificial muscles are used for the drive of the Underwater Manipulator.Compared with traditional drive, water hydraulic artificial muscles have some advantages, for example, high ratio of force and mass, faster response speed, high efficiency and compatible with the underwater environment. So we begin to design the water hydraulic artificial muscles and explore its driving characteristics by simulation and experiment.The first chapter mainly analyzes the use of Underwater Manipulator in industry, getting the feasibility that Underwater Manipulator used water hydraulic artificial muscles as drive. Then this chapter analyses the current situation of pneumatic and hydraulic artificial muscles and proposes the main contents.The second chapter analyzes the geometric construction of the water hydraulic artificial muscle, getting the relationship between the various parameters。 According to the similarity with pneumatic artificial muscle structure and working principle, getting the relationship between output force, water pressure and muscle contraction. By the mathematical model, we get the simulation model of the hydraulic artificial muscles, and analysis the dynamic characteristics of the hydraulic artificial muscles in different parameters.The third chapter, we designs the experimental system of the hydraulic artificial muscles driving characteristics, including drive control system to offering high-pressure water for artificial muscles, electro-hydraulic proportional loading system offering load force for artificial muscles, test platform and data acquisition system to complete data acquisition for the artificial muscle. Final we design the dynamic experimental program to provide a basis for the experiment. The forth chapter describes the design process of the water hydraulic artificial muscles, including the material selection of the key components of the artificial muscles, for example,the rubber hose, braid and end fitting and the choice of network parameters and the production process. Then we design the size of the muscle end fittings. Eventually the article introduces the assembling of water hydraulic artificial muscles.The fifth chapter describes the experiment of hydraulic artificial muscles, including pressure and tensile testing experiment, static test and the dynamic test. Pressure, tensile testing is used to detect the performance of the artificial muscle. Static test pressure includes same pressure and load experiments,it is used to get the relationship between the muscle contraction and load and the relationship between the muscle contraction and pressure. Dynamic experiment can get the dynamic response of the artificial muscle with different load and flow.