Cover illustration
Cover Story (Haibo LIU, Chengxin WANG, Te LI, Qile BO, Kuo LIU, Yongqing WANG. Front. Mech. Eng., 2022, 17(4): 55)
Thin-walled parts (TWPs) are widely used in sophisticated equipment in aerospace, automobile, shipping, nuclear industry, and other fields. Nevertheless, the characteristics of TWPs, such as their low stiffness, uneven stress distribution, and strong time-varying characteristics, inev
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Masticatory robots are an effective in vitro performance testing device for dental material and mandibular prostheses. A cable-driven linear actuator (CDLA) capable of bidirectional motion is proposed in this study to design a masticatory robot that can achieve increasingly human-like chewing motion. The CDLA presents remarkable advantages, such as lightweight and high stiffness structure, in using cable amplification and pulley systems. This work also exploits the proposed CDLA and designs a masticatory robot called Southeast University masticatory robot (SMAR) to solve existing problems, such as bulky driving linkage and position change of the muscle’s origin. Stiffness analysis and performance experiment validate the CDLA’s efficiency, with its stiffness reaching 1379.6 N/mm (number of cable parts n = 4), which is 21.4 times the input wire stiffness. Accordingly, the CDLA’s force transmission efficiencies in two directions are 84.5% and 85.9%. Chewing experiments are carried out on the developed masticatory robot to verify whether the CDLA can help SMAR achieve a natural human-like chewing motion and sufficient chewing forces for potential applications in performance tests of dental materials or prostheses.
The limited length shrinkage of shape memory alloy (SMA) wire seriously limits the motion range of SMA-based gripper. In this paper, a new soft finger without silicone gel was designed based on pre bent SMA wire, and the finger was back to its original shape by heating SMA wire, rather than relying only on heat exchange with the environment. Through imitating palm movement, a structure with adjustable spacing between fingers was made using SMA spring and rigid spring. The hook structure design at the fingertip can form self-locking to further improve the load capacity of gripper. Through the long thin rod model, the relationship of the initial pre bent angle on the bending angle and output force of the finger was analyzed. The stress-strain model of SMA spring was established for the selection of rigid spring. Three grasping modes were proposed to adapt to the weight of the objects. Through the test of the gripper, it was proved that the gripper had large bending amplitude, bending force, and response rate. The design provides a new idea for the lightweight design and convenient design of soft gripper based on SMA.
The creep life of an aeroengine recuperator is investigated in terms of continuum damage mechanics by using finite element simulations. The effects of the manifold wall thickness and creep properties of brazing filler metal on the operating life of the recuperator are analyzed. Results show that the crack initiates from the brazing filler metal located on the outer surface of the manifold with the wall thickness of 2 mm and propagates throughout the whole region of the brazing filler metal when the creep time reaches 34900 h. The creep life of the recuperator meets the requirement of 40000 h continuous operation when the wall thickness increases to 3.5 mm, but its total weight increases by 15%. Decreasing the minimum creep strain rate with the enhancement of the creep strength of the brazing filler metal presents an obvious effect on the creep life of the recuperator. At the same stress level, the creep rupture time of the recuperator is enhanced by 13 times if the mismatch between the minimum creep rate of the filler and base metal is reduced by 20%.
In fiber laser beam welding (LBW), the selection of optimal processing parameters is challenging and plays a key role in improving the bead geometry and welding quality. This study proposes a multi-objective optimization framework by combining an ensemble of metamodels (EMs) with the multi-objective artificial bee colony algorithm (MOABC) to identify the optimal welding parameters. An inverse proportional weighting method that considers the leave-one-out prediction error is presented to construct EM, which incorporates the competitive strengths of three metamodels. EM constructs the correlation between processing parameters (laser power, welding speed, and distance defocus) and bead geometries (bead width, depth of penetration, neck width, and neck depth) with average errors of 10.95%, 7.04%, 7.63%, and 8.62%, respectively. On the basis of EM, MOABC is employed to approximate the Pareto front, and verification experiments show that the relative errors are less than 14.67%. Furthermore, the main effect and the interaction effect of processing parameters on bead geometries are studied. Results demonstrate that the proposed EM-MOABC is effective in guiding actual fiber LBW applications.
Well-designed surface textures can improve the tribological properties and the efficiency of the electro-hydrostatic actuator (EHA) pump under high-speed and high-pressure conditions. This study proposes a multi-objective optimization model to obtain the arbitrarily surface textures design of the slipper/swash plate interface for improving the mechanical and volumetric efficiency of the EHA pump. The model is composed of the lubrication film model, the component dynamic model considering the spinning motion, and the multi-objective optimization model. In this way, the arbitrary-shaped surface texture with the best comprehensive effect in the EHA pump is achieved and its positive effects in the EHA pump prototype are verified. Experimental results show a reduction in wear and an improvement in mechanical and volumetric efficiency by 1.4% and 0.8%, respectively, with the textured swash plate compared with the untextured one.
As a nondestructive testing technique, terahertz time-domain spectroscopy technology is commonly used to measure the thickness of ceramic coat in thermal barrier coatings (TBCs). However, the invisibility of ceramic/thermally grown oxide (TGO) reflective wave leads to the measurement failure of natural growth TGO whose thickness is below 10 μm in TBCs. To detect and monitor TGO in the emergence stage, a time of flight (TOF) improved TGO thickness measurement method is proposed. A simulative investigation on propagation characteristics of terahertz shows the linear relationship between TGO thickness and phase shift of feature wave. The accurate TOF increment could be acquired from wavelet soft threshold and cross-correlation function with negative effect reduction of environmental noise and system oscillation. Thus, the TGO thickness could be obtained efficiently from the TOF increment of the monitor area with different heating times. The averaged error of 1.61 μm in experimental results demonstrates the highly accurate and robust measurement of the proposed method, making it attractive for condition monitoring and life prediction of TBCs.
Multiobjective trajectory planning is still face challenges due to certain practical requirements and multiple contradicting objectives optimized simultaneously. In this paper, a multiobjective trajectory optimization approach that sets energy consumption, execution time, and excavation volume as the objective functions is presented for the electro-hydraulic shovel (EHS). The proposed cubic polynomial S-curve is employed to plan the crowd and hoist speed of EHS. Then, a novel hybrid constrained multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition is proposed to deal with this constrained multiobjective optimization problem. The normalization of objectives is introduced to minimize the unfavorable effect of orders of magnitude. A novel hybrid constraint handling approach based on ε-constraint and the adaptive penalty function method is utilized to discover infeasible solution information and improve population diversity. Finally, the entropy weight technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution method is used to select the most satisfied solution from the Pareto optimal set. The performance of the proposed strategy is validated and analyzed by a series of simulation and experimental studies. Results show that the proposed approach can provide the high-quality Pareto optimal solutions and outperforms other trajectory optimization schemes investigated in this article.
The prober with an immovable lander and a movable rover is commonly used to explore the Moon’s surface. The rover can complete the detection on relatively flat terrain of the lunar surface well, but its detection efficiency on deep craters and mountains is relatively low due to the difficulties of reaching such places. A lightweight four-legged landing and walking robot called “FLLWR” is designed in this study. It can take off and land repeatedly between any two sites wherever on deep craters, mountains or other challenging landforms that are difficult to reach by direct ground movement. The robot integrates the functions of a lander and a rover, including folding, deploying, repetitive landing, and walking. A landing control method via compliance control is proposed to solve the critical problem of impact energy dissipation to realize buffer landing. Repetitive landing experiments on a five-degree-of-freedom lunar gravity testing platform are performed. Under the landing conditions with a vertical velocity of 2.1 m/s and a loading weight of 140 kg, the torque safety margin is 10.3% and 16.7%, and the height safety margin is 36.4% and 50.1% for the cases with or without an additional horizontal disturbance velocity of 0.4 m/s, respectively. The study provides a novel insight into the next-generation lunar exploration equipment.
As a virtual representation of a specific physical asset, the digital twin has great potential for realizing the life cycle maintenance management of a dynamic system. Nevertheless, the dynamic stress concentration is generated since the state of the dynamic system changes over time. This generation of dynamic stress concentration has hindered the exploitation of the digital twin to reflect the dynamic behaviors of systems in practical engineering applications. In this context, this paper is interested in achieving real-time performance prediction of dynamic systems by developing a new digital twin framework that includes simulation data, measuring data, multi-level fusion modeling (M-LFM), visualization techniques, and fatigue analysis. To leverage its capacity, the M-LFM method combines the advantages of different surrogate models and integrates simulation and measured data, which can improve the prediction accuracy of dynamic stress concentration. A telescopic boom crane is used as an example to verify the proposed framework for stress prediction and fatigue analysis of the complex dynamic system. The results show that the M-LFM method has better performance in the computational efficiency and calculation accuracy of the stress prediction compared with the polynomial response surface method and the kriging method. In other words, the proposed framework can leverage the advantages of digital twins in a dynamic system: damage monitoring, safety assessment, and other aspects and then promote the development of digital twins in industrial fields.
In this work, we put forward a massively efficient filter for topology optimization (TO) utilizing the splitting of tensor product structure. With the aid of splitting technique, the traditional weight matrices of B-splines and non-uniform rational B-spline implicit filters are decomposed equivalently into two or three submatrices, by which the sensitivity analysis is reformulated for the nodal design variables without altering the optimization process. Afterwards, an explicit sensitivity filter, which is decomposed by the splitting pipeline as that applied to implicit filter, is established in terms of the tensor product of the axial distances between adjacent element centroids, and the corresponding sensitivity analysis is derived for elemental design variables. According to the numerical results, the average updating time for the design variables is accelerated by two-order-of-magnitude for the decomposed filter compared with the traditional filter. In addition, the memory burden and computing time of the weight matrix are decreased by six- and three-order-of-magnitude for the decomposed filter. Therefore, the proposed filter is massively improved by the splitting of tensor product structure and delivers a much more efficient way of solving TO problems in the frameworks of isogeometric analysis and finite element analysis.
During the overall processing of thin-walled parts (TWPs), the guaranteed capability of the machining process and quality is determined by fixtures. Therefore, reliable fixtures suitable for the structure and machining process of TWP are essential. In this review, the key role of fixtures in the manufacturing system is initially discussed. The main problems in machining and workholding due to the characteristics of TWP are then analyzed in detail. Afterward, the definition of TWP fixtures is reinterpreted from narrow and broad perspectives. Fixture functions corresponding to the issues of machining and workholding are then clearly stated. Fixture categories are classified systematically according to previous research achievements, and the operation mode, functional characteristics, and structure of each fixture are comprehensively described. The function and execution mode of TWP fixtures are then systematically summarized and analyzed, and the functions of various TWP fixtures are evaluated. Some directions for future research on TWP fixtures technology are also proposed. The main purpose of this review is to provide some reference and guidance for scholars to examine TWP fixtures.
The development of organ-on-a-chip systems demands high requirements for adequate micro-pump performance, which needs excellent performance and effective transport of active cells. In this study, we designed a piezoelectric pump with a flexible venous valve inspired by that of humans. Performance test of the proposed pump with deionized water as the transmission medium shows a maximum output flow rate of 14.95 mL/min when the input voltage is 100 V, and the pump can transfer aqueous solutions of glycerol with a viscosity of 10.8 mPa·s. Cell survival rate can reach 97.22% with a yeast cell culture solution as the transmission medium. A computational model of the electric-solid-liquid multi-physical field coupling of the piezoelectric pump with a flexible venous valve is established, and simulation results are consistent with experimental results. The proposed pump can help to construct the circulating organ-on-a-chip system, and the simple structure and portable application can enrich the design of microfluidic systems. In addition, the multi-physical field coupling computational model established for the proposed piezoelectric pump can provide an in-depth study of the characteristics of the flow field, facilitating the optimal design of the micro-pump and providing a reference for the further study of active cell transport in organ-on-a-chip systems.
Gearbox fault diagnosis based on vibration sensing has drawn much attention for a long time. For highly integrated complicated mechanical systems, the intercoupling of structure transfer paths results in a great reduction or even change of signal characteristics during the process of original vibration transmission. Therefore, using gearbox housing vibration signal to identify gear meshing excitation signal is of great significance to eliminate the influence of structure transfer paths, but accompanied by huge scientific challenges. This paper establishes an analytical mathematical description of the whole transfer process from gear meshing excitation to housing vibration. The gear meshing stiffness (GMS) identification approach is proposed by using housing vibration signals for two stages of inversion based on the mathematical description. Specifically, the linear system equations of transfer path analysis are first inverted to identify the bearing dynamic forces. Then the dynamic differential equations are inverted to identify the GMS. Numerical simulation and experimental results demonstrate the proposed method can realize gear fault diagnosis better than the original housing vibration signal and has the potential to be generalized to other speeds and loads. Some interesting properties are discovered in the identified GMS spectra, and the results also validate the rationality of using meshing stiffness to describe the actual gear meshing process. The identified GMS has a clear physical meaning and is thus very useful for fault diagnosis of the complicated equipment.
Density variation during the injection molding process directly reflects the state of plastic melt and contains valuable information for process monitoring and optimization. Therefore, in-situ density measurement is of great interest and has significant application value. The existing methods, such as pressure−volume−temperature (PVT) method, have the shortages of time-delay and high cost of sensors. This study is the first to propose an in-situ density measurement method using ultrasonic technology. The analyses of the time-domain and frequency-domain signals are combined in the proposed method. The ultrasonic velocity is obtained from the time-domain signals, and the acoustic impedance is computed through a full-spectral analysis of the frequency-domain signals. Experiments with different process conditions are conducted, including different melt temperature, injection speed, material, and mold structure. Results show that the proposed method has good agreement with the PVT method. The proposed method has the advantages of in-situ measurement, non-destructive, high accuracy, low cost, and is of great application value for the injection molding industry.
Nanoscale surface roughness of tungsten heavy alloy components is required in the nuclear industry and precision instruments. In this study, a high-performance ultrasonic elliptical vibration cutting (UEVC) system is developed to solve the precision machining problem of tungsten heavy alloy. A new design method of stepped bending vibration horn based on Timoshenko’s theory is first proposed, and its design process is greatly simplified. The arrangement and working principle of piezoelectric transducers on the ultrasonic vibrator using the fifth resonant mode of bending are analyzed to realize the dual-bending vibration modes. A cutting tool is installed at the end of the ultrasonic vibration unit to output the ultrasonic elliptical vibration locus, which is verified by finite element method. The vibration unit can display different three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) UEVC characteristics by adjusting the corresponding position of the unit and workpiece. A dual-channel ultrasonic power supply is developed to excite the ultrasonic vibration unit, which makes the UEVC system present the resonant frequency of 41 kHz and the maximum amplitude of 14.2 μm. Different microtopography and surface roughness are obtained by the cutting experiments of tungsten heavy alloy hemispherical workpiece with the UEVC system, which validates the proposed design’s technical capability and provides optimization basis for further improving the machining quality of the curved surface components of tungsten heavy alloy.
In the artificial intelligence-driven modern wireless communication system, antennas are required to be reconfigurable in terms of size according to changing application scenarios. However, conventional antennas with constant phase distributions cannot achieve enhanced gains in different reconfigurable sizes. In this paper, we propose a mechanically reconfigurable radiation array (RRA) based on miniaturized elements and a mechanically reconfigurable system to obtain gain-enhanced antennas in compact and deployed states. A five-element RRA with a phase-reconfigurable center element is designed and analyzed theoretically. The experimental sample has been fabricated, driven by a deployable frame with only one degree of freedom to realize the size and phase distribution reconfiguration simultaneously to validate the enhanced gains of RRA. The proposed RRA can be tessellated into larger arrays to achieve higher gains in other frequency regimes, such as terahertz or photonics applications with nanometer fabrication technology.
