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Structural design and kinematic analysis of a welding robot for liquefied natural gas membrane tank automatic welding

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Abstract

Owing to the complex structures of welding materials, special welding conditions, and challenges during the automatic welding of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) ship Mark III’s membrane tank, a series–parallel–series hybrid structure mobile welding robot having sufficient adaptability for welding corrugated plates in membrane tanks was designed in this study. The configuration of the hybrid robot had good workspace characteristics, and it could always maintain a certain distance and angle between the end of the welding torch and the weld line because of its detection and control system coordination. In this study, degrees of freedom, kinematic characteristics, workspace, and adaptability analyses were conducted for the hybrid mechanism. A simulation verification was performed, and a ripple-trajectory-following experiment was conducted using real objects. The simulation and experimental results showed that the welding robot had a reasonable mechanism design, smooth motion, and good terminal distance and angle control, thus meeting the requirements for automatic welding of corrugated plates in membrane tanks.

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Acknowledgements

We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [51675233].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, 214000, China

    Jiang Yi, Han Qingqing, Zhou Chao, Yu Jianfeng & Hua Chunjian

  2. School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Dai Zhaoen

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  1. Jiang Yi
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  2. Han Qingqing
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  3. Dai Zhaoen
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  4. Zhou Chao
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  5. Yu Jianfeng
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by all authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [Han Qingqing] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jiang Yi.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection: New Intelligent Manufacturing Technologies through the Integration of Industry 4.0 and Advanced Manufacturing.

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Yi, J., Qingqing, H., Zhaoen, D. et al. Structural design and kinematic analysis of a welding robot for liquefied natural gas membrane tank automatic welding. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 122, 461–474 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09861-2

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