Advanced Digital Twin of a Industrial Robotic System for Measuring Pipe Wall Thickness in Nuclear Power Plants

This paper presents the development of the digital twin of an advanced industrial robotic system for pipe wall thickness inspection in the turbine building of nuclear power plants. The robotic inspection system consists of 3 units, the first being the mobile unit, the second a robotic unit for automatic pipe wall thickness measurement using the ultrasound technique, and the third unit for power supply, communication and auxiliary services. To develop the advanced robotic inspection system, a prototype was built in the laboratory to study different situations and geometric configurations that may arise in the field (turbine building). With Process Simulate software version 16.1.2, the digital twin of the prototype was developed including industrial robot, metal platform and pipe sections. This paper presents the results for the virtual commissioning of the wall thickness measurement of a vertical pipe section and the novel design of the End-Effector of the industrial robot. Therefore, technical discussions are made on the requirements to deal from the design to the functional requirements of developing the end-effector, digital twin and the creation of a commissioning method for industrial robots. The analyses and insights from virtual commissioning made it possible to verify that the robot could access any part of the pipe surface through interpolated movements with spatial coordinates of the robotic arm along its sides.