Modeling, Simulation, and Verification for Structural Stability and Vibration Reduction of Gantry Robots for Shipyard Welding Automation Using ANSYS Workbench® and Recurdyn®

With the strengthening of domestic and foreign environmental regulations in recent times, the disposal of small scrapped FRP (fiber-reinforced plastic) vessels is raising a problem and there is a growing interest in eco-friendly aluminum vessels. Welding is one of the important things in the manufacturing processes of aluminum vessels. This chapter aims to research on structural stability and vibration reduction of a three-axes Cartesian coordinate gantry robot for improving the welding quality. Structural instability and the drive unit of each axis can negatively affect vibration. Structural analysis will be performed for parts that can cause structural instability due to load. Structural analysis will verify the structural stability of gantry robot using ANSYS Workbench®, based on the modeling for analysis using Solidworks®. Also, the driving parts of the x axis and y axis are rack and pinion gear models, which have the disadvantage of vibration caused by backlash. A simulation to reduce vibration caused by backlash will be conducted using Recurdyn®. By simulation with added pinion gear model, we investigate on how the model affects the vibration of the backlash.