Towards Intelligent Maintenance of Thermal Power Plants: A Novel Robot for Checking Water Wall Tube

摘要

Intelligent operation and maintenance of thermal power plants enabled by advanced robotics and data analysis is an emerging field for reducing cost and increasing efficiency in their daily maintenance. In particular, the water wall is one of the vital units which are highly complex and work under very tough condition. Therefore, the intelligent operation of this kind of units faces great challenges. To move towards intelligent operation and maintenance for thermal power plants, this research puts forward a kind of intelligent inspection robot which possess unique superiority in terms of both system architecture and system application. Specifically, to achieve increased safety and reliability and reduced cost in water wall inspection. An intelligent inspection robot was developed, which combines robot technology, non-destructive testing technology, machine vision technology and data analysis techniques. The developed inspection robot can climb on the water wall surface vertically as well as being able to move horizontally. In addition, the robot can also avoid obstacles through a combination of computer vision and ultrasonic technologies. In terms of tube inspection, the robot can obtain various parameters by means of ultrasonic testing and visual inspection. Data obtained can be sent to the central console for processing and analysis through wireless transmission. Testing work has been done in a power plant and the results obtained have shown that this kind of new intelligent inspection technologies have great potential in the intelligent operation and maintenance of thermal power plants.