Speaker
Liang Du
(Robotics Institute)
Description
The remote handling in-vessel inspection manipulator specially developed for EAST superconducting tokamak has proven its kinematics feasibility in scale one toroidal vessel and its survivability under 120 °C high temperature. To adapt this manipulator for real in-vessel operation, most of its joint components, such as motors and reducers, must be isolated in sealed spaces to prevent possible contamination to the in-vessel vacuum ambient. In order to verify the feasibility of combining vacuum sealing techniques with the previous in-vessel inspection manipulator solution, we have designed a standalone rotary joint module as prototype for relevant experimental tests. The joint module has a standard stainless bellow tube to seal all its ordinary commercial joint components from the outside, while servo control wires, sensor wires and active cooling water tubes inside the sealed chamber are led out by special vacuum feedthroughs. Basic motion tests have been carried out under equivalent in-vessel environment, i.e. 120 °C high temperature and 10e-5 Pa vacuum. This paper mainly presents the vacuum sealing design and related test results of this prototype joint module. A comparison with previous in-vessel operation manipulator solutions, such as AIA from CEA and IVVS for current ITER program, is also involved. Further work will concentrate on adapting the whole in-vessel manipulator for vacuum environment operation based on this preliminary design experience of bellow tube sealed joint module.
Co-authors
Jiabo Feng
(Robotics Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)
Liang Du
(Robotics Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)
Tan Chen
(Robotics Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)
Weijun Zhang
(Robotics Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)
