Development of Low Cost Solar Chimney Power Project

The solar chimney power generation technology is the most reliable, cost-effective, and environment-friendly to generate electricity using wind turbines, where an inflow of ambient air flow is caused by solar energy. Amongst all types of renewable energy, this is one of the most encouraging, attractive sources of clean energy for sustainable development and is the most viable substitute to fossil fuel as its reserve is fast depleting, which is a primary source of environmental pollution and global warming. In the present study, a small-scale Solar Chimney Power Plant (SCPP) setup with a 2.5 m collector diameter, collector inlet height of 15 cm, chimney height and diameter of 6 m, and 10 cm, respectively is fabricated. The experimental data has been collected exposing the plant on different days and times. The maximum velocity of air at the inlet of the chimney is found to be around 1.5 m/s. The average solar insolation of 635 W/m2 is recorded inside the collector, which generates power ∼ 0.72 W. Numerical verification has been made by ANSYS Fluent and shows close agreement. A numerical study of this experimental setup shows reverse flow and vortex inside the SCPP. The diameter of the chimney is increased to 50 cm for smooth flow through SCPP numerically. Air velocity at the chimney inlet becomes 2.3 m/s (corresponding mass flow rate ∼ 0.55 kg/s, power ∼ 2.75 W). Further best inlet height is searched numerically, which shows 7 cm inlet height is optimum and will produce maximum velocity (2.44 m/s), maximum mass flow rate (∼0.59 kg/s), output power (∼2.92 W) accordingly. Correlations are developed to find out the best inlet height and corresponding maximum velocity of small-scale SCPP. This will help researchers to design small-scale SCPP with a better understanding on thermo-flow physics inside it and its power development. [Link], [Link], [Link]

Workspace Analysis of Industrial Manipulators and its Effective Teaching in RoboAnalyzer

Serial manipulators have a workspace within which the manipulator can reach. While designing and developing a manipulator, it is important to check whether a pose (position and orientation) is attainable or not. Though there exist many methods on workspace analysis that are proposed by researchers, these have to be implemented by the users in the form of MATLAB program or equivalent. There is no free software, in the best knowledge of the authors, that can draw workspace for a wrist-partitioned serial manipulator. Through this paper, the authors present a new module on Workspace Analysis in RoboAnalyzer software. The module lets the user enter the Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) parameters of a serial manipulator and its workspace region is drawn and shown to the user. The authors have discovered that incremental joint motion gives better results than the Monte-Carlo random sampling of joint angles within allowed joint range, proposed by many researchers. The authors also propose a novel method to determine the boundary of the points in the workspace using a concept of radial frustum. Finally, the workspace regions of many industrial manipulators were drawn using the proposed module and verified to be correct. The authors feel the module would help in effective teaching and learning in a robotics related course and also help robotics designers to visualize the workspace and make any corrective changes in their design. [Link]

Design and Fabrication of Mobile Robots: RoboMuse 5

The Project undertook to design and fabricate a sturdy chassis of RoboMuse 5, a semi- autonomous mobile robot that consisted of a base and a rack arrangement. It is designed to carry a payload of around 80-100 kg, using the welded structure of Aluminium Alloy 6061, supported by four caster wheels and a motor-gear arrangement. We added a wood plank of 5 mm thickness in the middle to attach the differential wheels. Moreover, for suspension, the plywood is kept fixed against two double hinges. [Link]