Structure design of Large Francis turbine runner blade defect detection robot

Abstract

My country is the largest installed hydropower capacity in the world, the safe, stable, and reliable operation of the unit has always been a technical problem faced by the hydropower industry. The runner is the core part of the hydropower unit for energy conversion, and its quality will directly affect the reliability and hydraulic performance of the unit. At present, the detection of the runner status of the running unit is completely manual. To solve the problems of low efficiency, high cost, and great harm to the human body of Large Francis turbine runner blades, a new type of defect detection robot for turbine runner blades was designed. The robot body structure is designed by modules, which is easy to load and unload, easy to carry, fast manufacturing, and low requirement for manual operation. Magnetic adsorption chain track is introduced into the wheel system of the robot, and two groups of tracks are adopted, which makes the robot compact and can move flexibly in the narrow space turbine runner. On the other hand, the central position of the robot is equipped with an adsorption force self-adjusting device to ensure that the robot can stably adsorb on the blade surface at a certain angle from the horizontal plane.