Cable maintenance robot and its dynamic response moving on the horizontal cable

Abstract

The cable-stayed bridge is of intense popular interest in modern middle-span bridge construction. However, as main supporting parts, cables can't be maintained by efficient methods. The cable maintenance robot developed in this paper is the first application of special robots to cables of cable-stayed bridges. The paper puts forward design method of modularizing which can simplify the design course greatly. The key problems of new climbing mechanisms and painting mechanism applying to arbitrary-gradient cables are developed. The cable robot system can fulfil a series of maintenance of the cables such as cleaning, painting and detecting cables. The shortcomings such as low efficiency, high cost, less safety of artificial methods that are normally adopted in cable-stayed bridges are overcome. Furthermore, the paper deals theoretically with the linear dynamic response of cable under robot's moving on a horizontal cable with constant magnitude and velocity by including the effect of its mass