해상풍력발전 지지구조물의 유지보수용 수중 기둥등반로봇에 관한 실험적 연구

Abstract

Maintenance works of offshore wind turbines could take a longer time, which causes the reduction of their energy production efficiency, than those of onshore wind turbines owing to severe offshore environment. Subsequently, preventive maintenance measures are required to increase the production efficiency. Thus, we proposed a wheel-based Underwater Pole Climbing Robot (UPCR) platform, which was aimed at the periodic inspection and maintenance of the substructures of the offshore wind turbines, with three advantages: high speed, good mobility and low power consumption. In the proposed platform, a self-locking system using a gripper module was adopted for preventing slippery problem and a dual configuration was chosen for moving on a branched structure. As a result, the proposed robot was able to continuously climb, preserve it‘s position at the pole without consuming energy, and move from the pole to the other branched pole. The results of this research show that the UPCR has basic moving capabilities required for the underwater work for the substructures of the offshore wind turbines.