Structural Optimization of an Five Degrees of Freedom (T-3R-T) Robot Manipultor Using Finite Element Analysis

Abstract 5-DOF (Five degrees of freedom) palletizing robot is widely used in India, which is playing a more and more important role in all manufacturing and automation industry. The important selection parameter of five degrees of freedom robot arm for welding application includes Reach, strength, stiffness, robot weight, which mainly depends on the structural optimization design of desired robot. So it is of importance to study on the structural optimization design by means of conventional finite element analysis (FEA) using ANSYS. In this paper, the framework of structural optimization design is proposed. Secondly, taking welding robot as research object, its structure is described and the finite element (FE) model of the robot is developed for the finite element analysis. The results show that structural optimization design can reduce the total mass of robot manipulator by using the finite element analysis.