State of the Art and Conceptual Design of Robotic Solutions for In Situ Hard Coating of Hydraulic Turbines

Hydropower turbine’s blades are constantly exposed to abrasion and cavitation phenomena, demanding regular maintenance for flow stability. Hard coating techniques by thermal aspersion are used to reduce the mechanical wear, thus increasing blade’s life cycle, and turbine efficiency. Currently, apply...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of control, automation & electrical systems Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 105 - 113
Main Authors Freitas, Renan S., Silva, Gabriel A. C., Soares, Eduardo E. M., Ferrão, Estevão F., Costa, Ramon R.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.02.2017
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Abrasion
Cavitation
Coating
Conceptual design
Control
Control and Systems Theory
Dismantling
Downtime
Electrical Engineering
Engineering
Flow stability
Hard surfacing
Hydraulic turbines
Hydroelectric power
Life cycle engineering
Mechatronics
Robotics
Robotics and Automation
State of the art
Turbine blades
Turbines
Wear
Turbine
Hydropower
Hard coating
Thermal spray
In situ
Robotics
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Summary:Hydropower turbine’s blades are constantly exposed to abrasion and cavitation phenomena, demanding regular maintenance for flow stability. Hard coating techniques by thermal aspersion are used to reduce the mechanical wear, thus increasing blade’s life cycle, and turbine efficiency. Currently, applying a new coating layer requires turbine disassembling and recalibration. EMMA is a robotic system to perform hard coating by thermal spray on hydraulic turbine blades within the turbine environment, i.e., hard coating application to an installed blade, significantly reducing the turbine downtime. This document is a study of the state of the art of in situ hydropower turbine robotic systems and describes the conceptual designs for EMMA. The results outlines the next steps for EMMA and future projects in the same area.
ISSN:2195-3880
2195-3899
DOI:10.1007/s40313-016-0287-6