Design and analysis of spring roll-style retractable sampling arm

This paper described a spring roll-style retractable sampling arm with open cylindrical shell structure. It has small shrink volume, long expand path, low power consumption, large pushing force, and wide adaption, which can be widely used in mini-sampler in dangerous or ungetatable place to sample the rock, dust and other materials. Specifically, the design of the sampling arm is described, and finite element method is then carried out to study the relationship between geometric parameters and the largest pushing force. Finally, a simple and efficient mathematical formula on the maximum pushing force is given and it agrees well with the finite element analysis through the comparison between them. Experimental results show the feasibility of this design.