Design and Analysis of Novel Wall-Climbing Robot on Discontinuous Ferromagnetic Surface

In order to carry out automatic cleaning of ventilation openings on the hydroelectric generator stator surface, a wall-climbing robot needs to face challenges in maintaining stable adhesion and smooth movement on the stator surfaces composed of discontinuous ferromagnetic materials. This paper proposed a novel magnetic adhesion wall-climbing wheeled robot with integration of permanent magnet arrays. Firstly, a permanent magnet array adhesion unit is designed and its structural parameters is optimized through magnetic field simulation. Secondly, an adhesion force model for magnetic wheels on the discontinuous permeable material surface is constructed to analyze the force characteristics on the transition zones between permeable materials. Finally, the magnetic adhesion force model is validated through magnetic field simulation, calculating the total magnetic adhesion force of the robot based on different transition positions. Simulation results show that the proposed robot structure can moving smoothly on the surface of the stator with certain load capability.