Design of a robotic water-pipe rehabilitation

Corrosion in water pipeline causes leak and forms tubercle at the vicinity of leaks. Various in-pipe robots have been developed in recent years for locomotion and inspection along the pipeline. Not much focus is put on in-pipe operations such as pipe maintenance and rehabilitation. This thesis presents an in-pipe robotic system for minimal particle contamination obstruction removal operation of corroded water pipes. It proposes a robotic system with a Manipulation Module and a Compliant Surface Adaptation Module. The Manipulation Module contains a 4-Degree of Freedom robotic manipulator that is able to remove tubercle in 102mm diameter pipes. The Compliant Surface Adaptation Module contains optimized designs to enclose a watertight volume on a macroscopically rough surface. This robotic platform is the first in-pipe robot designated to rehabilitate water pipe with minimal contamination.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Yeung, Yip Fun.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kamal Youcef-Toumi.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128333

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/128333