Adhesion properties of carbon nanotube arrays for an adhesive foot of a space crawling robot

Abstract

A new type of space crawling robot was proposed for spacecraft maintenance missions and a nanoscale microarray structure was designed as the robot foot structure. In this study, a carbon nanotube array structure was adopted as the adhered nanoscale microarray structure of the robot foot. A theoretical model of the carbon nanotube structure was established, and the influence of the structural parameters of the carbon nanotube array on its adhesion characteristics was analyzed. A force model of carbon nanotube arrays on different roughness surfaces and under different preloads was established using the discrete element software, EDEM. A simulation of the desorption process of the carbon nanotube array structure in the normal and tangential directions was conducted. The adhesion characteristics of the carbon nanotube structure were analyzed. On this basis, the carbon nanotube microarray structure was fabricated using chemical vapor deposition, and a force test system was established on the platform of a scanning electron microscope to test the adhesion force of the carbon nanotube array in a vacuum environment. The influence of preloading and roughness on the adhesion characteristics of the carbon nanotube array structure was analyzed.

Construction of Medusa‐Like Adhesive Carbon Nanotube Array Induced by Deformation of Alumina Sheets

“…To quantify the difference in adhesion strength in both directions of MAs, an index of adhesion anisotropy is defined as: $$$$\begin{equation}{I}_{{\mathrm{adhesion\ anisotropy}}} = \left| {\frac{{{\eta }_{{\mathrm{normal}}}}}{{{\eta }_{{\mathrm{shear}}}}} - 1} \right|\ \end{equation}$$$$where η normal refers to the adhesion strength in the normal direction, η shear refers to the adhesion strength in the shear direction. The results of calculating I adhesion anisotropy of MAs, CA and PA in our work and the works we found reported adhesion strengths in both directions [ 35,36,49–52,41–48 ] are shown in Figure 4k.…”

“…The results of calculating I adhesion anisotropy of MAs, CA and PA in our work and the works we found reported adhesion strengths in both directions [35,36,[49][50][51][52][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48] are shown in Figure 4k.…”

Adhesion of Individual Attachment Setae of the Spider Cupiennius salei to Substrates With Different Roughness and Surface Energy

“…This knowledge can lead to new bioinspired materials with outstanding properties such as nanostructured reversible residue-free dry adhesives e.g. based on cellulose nanofibers (Schaber et al, 2018), carbon nanotubes (Bhushan et al, 2008;Schaber et al, 2015a;Schaber et al, 2015b;Su et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2020) or other polymeric materials (Xue et al, 2012;Pattantyus-Abraham et al, 2013;Xue et al, 2013;Borodich and Savencu 2017;Di Tan et al, 2020).…”