Under-Actuated Humanoid Model With Elastomeric Springs

Author(s):  
Christian Fry ◽  
Stanley Coram ◽  
Davide Piovesan

This paper presents the mechanical modifications and simulation of a bipedal humanoid system actuated with linear springs to produce a standing equilibrium position. The original humanoid system is comprised of two leg assemblies connected by a hip bracket. Eleven pairs of springs were attached to the system in locations designed to simulate the muscles and tendons in a human body. The next evolution of the LUIGEE project is the inclusion of three servo motors per leg and a series of elastomeric springs. Although servo motors have been introduced, it is desired to maintain the passive, static aspect of the previous prototype. This paper reports on part modifications to accommodate servo motors and the introduction of polymeric springs that guarantee static stability. ABS plastic and photopolymer resin was used to produce the new model. Due to the size of the motors, some parts of the original robot were redesigned. The new design iteration was stimulated using SimWise 4D®, where the hysteretic effect of rubber was modelled with an equivalent viscous damping.

Author(s):  
Kai Feng ◽  
Xueyuan Zhao ◽  
Zhiyang Guo

With increasing need for high-speed, high-temperature, and oil-free turbomachinery, gas foil bearings (GFBs) have been considered to be the best substitutes for traditional oil-lubricated bearings. A multi-cantilever foil bearing (MCFB), a novel GFB with multi-cantilever foil strips serving as the compliant underlying structure, was designed, fabricated, and tested. A series of static and dynamic load tests were conducted to measure the structural stiffness and equivalent viscous damping of the prototype MCFB. Experiments of static load versus deflection showed that the proposed bearing has a large mechanical energy dissipation capability and a pronounced nonlinear static stiffness that can prevents overly large motion amplitude of journal. Dynamic load tests evaluated the influence of motion amplitude, loading orientation and misalignment on the dynamic stiffness and equivalent viscous damping with respect to excitation frequency. The test results demonstrated that the dynamic stiffness and damping are strongly dependent on the excitation frequency. Three motion amplitudes were applied to the bearing housing to investigate the effects of motion amplitude on the dynamic characteristics. It is noted that the bearing dynamic stiffness and damping decreases with incrementally increasing motion amplitudes. A high level of misalignment can lead to larger static and dynamic bearing stiffness as well as to larger equivalent viscous damping. With dynamic loads applied to two orientations in the bearing midplane separately, the dynamic stiffness increases rapidly and the equivalent viscous damping declines slightly. These results indicate that the loading orientation is a non-negligible factor on the dynamic characteristics of MCFBs.


2015 ◽  
Vol 138 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Feng ◽  
Yuman Liu ◽  
Xueyuan Zhao ◽  
Wanhui Liu

Rotors supported by gas foil bearings (GFBs) experience stability problem caused by subsynchronous vibrations. To obtain a GFB with satisfactory damping characteristics, this study presented a novel hybrid bump-metal mesh foil bearing (HB-MMFB) that consists of a bump foil and metal mesh blocks in an underlying supporting structure, which takes advantage of both bump-type foil bearings (BFBs) and MMFBs. A test rig with a nonrotating shaft was designed to estimate structure characterization. Results from the static load tests show that the proposed HB-MFBs exhibit an excellent damping level compared with the BFBs with a similar size because of the countless microslips in the metal mesh blocks. In the dynamic load tests, the HB-MFB with a metal mesh density of 36% presents a viscous damping coefficient that is approximately twice that of the test BFB. The dynamics structural coefficients of HB-MFBs, including structural stiffness, equivalent viscous damping, and structural loss factor, are all dependent on excitation frequency and motion amplitude. Moreover, they exhibit an obvious decrease with the decline in metal mesh density.


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (11) ◽  
pp. 1277-1296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umberto Tomassetti ◽  
Francesco Graziotti ◽  
Luigi Sorrentino ◽  
Andrea Penna

2000 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ha˚kan L. Wettergren

The paper is concerned with material and microslip damping in a rotor. The horizontal rotor is carried by anisotropic bearings, which means that the shaft feels three different frequencies, the rotational frequency and the difference and the sum of the rotational and vibrational frequencies. When material damping is studied, these three frequencies lead to three different equivalent viscous damping constants and the dissipated energy can be solved analytically. The rotor slot wedges in a turbine generator are used as an example of microslip damping. In this case the damping is nonlinear and the results are obtained through numerical simulations. The results show that these two different internal damping sources give both similarities and dissimilarities. The sign change and different magnitude of the dissipated energy running sub- or supercritical are the same. However the dissipated energy for material damping is not affected by gravity which microslip damping is.


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