Design and Optimization of a Novel Swirling Sucker for Underwater Wall-Climbing Robots

In this paper, we proposed a novel swirling sucker design for underwater wall-climbing robots for automatic inspection on the concrete structure surfaces. The novel centrifugal impeller of blade structure is proposed and the design parameters are optimized for maximum suction force of the motor driven swirling sucker based on fluid dynamic simulations. The optimized centrifugal impeller type sucker is further compared with straight blade type sucker by using both simulation and experimental data. Simulation and Experiment data shows that the proposed swirling sucker has better suction force output profile than straight blade type suckers. Finally, an underwater wall-climbing prototype robot is implemented to verify the performance of the proposed swirling sucker.