| Abstract [eng] |
The aim of the project is to design and analyze suction cup activated by piezoelectric actuator, suction cups play an important role in industries, especially packing, food industries etc., which involve moving objects from one place to another. Commercial suction cups use pneumatics for its working, which are heavy, take a lot of space, sometimes dangerous, very noisy etc. This project aims to introduce a novel suction cup which uses smart materials to activate the cup. A piezoelectric material is attached to a membrane, when electric current is applied the piezoelectric material deforms, causing the membrane to deform as well. Using this phenomenon to create a small pressure difference inside the cup, which can be used to adhere it to the workpiece. This gives lot of flexibility to the suction cup, since piezoelectric materials can be activated at a very high frequency, and it just needs a DC source and a control panel to be controlled, which is portable and easy to control and can be programmed. In this project a design for a suction cup is done, and is modeled using simulating software and compared with the experimental data to find membrane material that gives the best results. |
