Modelling and Implementation of Out-Pipe Inspection Robot

The chemical, oil and windmill plants use pipelines for transportation, mainly carbon steel. The pipelines are examined by human personnel, which is unsafe and leads to many accidents. The solution for these problems is inspection robots which can be used extensively for pipeline inspection. They can perform the task of analyzing the damage or defects that occur over the pipelines. In this project, we have designed and developed a robot which can crawl and traverse along the pipeline externally. A 3D model of the robot is made and exported to the ADAMS package for dynamic analysis. The results show that for the robot to move along the pipeline, a force of a bout 100 N and a dynamic torque of 5 N are required. A magnetic analysis was performed to select the wheel that could produce 60 N of force for a single pair. This analysis was carried out using the FEMM package and from the results obtained, an N35 magnet with a radius of 50 mm was selected. The hardware and components for a 400 mm diameter pipeline were chosen based on simulation results, and the results obtained are up to 85% in agreement with simulation results. The proposed robot was fabricated, and it was found that it could carry a load of 8 Kg while moving over a vertical pipe.