Inspection Robot Design for Underwater Structure in Complex Flow Environment

Aiming at the challenges of underwater structure inspection in complex flow environment, this paper presents a wall-climbing robot for underwater structure inspection, which requires obstacle avoidance, complex wall surface transition ability and high flew velocity adaptability. In this paper, the flow field environment of the robot is firstly simulated and analyzed. Taking the complex underwater environment of a cylindrical bridge pier as an example, the flow velocity and pressure distribution of the flow field near the bridge pier and the impact of the water flow when the robot is adsorbed on each surface of the bridge pier are obtained by using Fluent simulation. Secondly, the overall structure of the robot is proposed, in which the interplay of the wheel-foot structure combining the characteristics of wheel and foot and the freely rotatable adsorption structure is used to improve the robot's adaptability to the complex wall surface. Finally, the mechanical simulation and strength verification of the robot structure show that the structural performance of the designed robot meets the design requirements.