Design and parametric investigations of permanent magnet adhesion mechanism for robots climbing on reinforced concrete walls

Wall Climbing Robots (WCRs) have found extensive applications in the past decade in numerous engineering fields, however, the design of efficient adhesion mechanism for robots climbing on concrete surfaces remains a challenge and attracts research attention. This paper proposes various designs of magnetic adhesion mechanism for concrete surfaces and investigates the adhesion force and payload capacities each design would accommodate for wall climbing robot applications. Permanent magnet is used as the magnetic adhesion mechanism and a yoke structure helps in holding the magnets and influences the adhesion characteristics of the mechanism. The effect of various structural designs of adhesion mechanisms on the adhesion force and payload capacity on the concrete surface is studied in this work. The adhesion forces against the different standoff distances which comprise the gap between the magnet and the concrete surface are also investigated therein. The results show that the developed adhesion mechanism can be applied for concrete walls generating the required adhesion forces and providing a better insight in choosing the best configuration, number of magnets and standoff distances for the design of adhesion mechanism against the required payload of WCR.