Investigation on adaptability of carbon fiber tube for serial manipulator

Abstract

This work describes the investigation on adapting the carbon fiber tube for building lightweight serial manipulator links. The carbon fiber is chosen based on its significant properties such as lightweight and superior mechanical strength, as an alternative to the existing conventional alloys such as steel and aluminium. A serial manipulator also suffers from a few disadvantages. A typical serial manipulator generally has a structure weight to payload ratio of approximately 200:1, which in turn drastically increases the power and torque requirements of the link actuators. So, there is a need to address this serious problem by investigating the lightweight construction for robot arm links through alternative designs. Such a design will significantly decrease the power requirements of the robot arm without compromising on stability. A comparative study has been done considering three different materials: steel, aluminium and carbon fiber using finite element analysis to check payload capability and stress concentrations.