Yu Liu, Liang Liang, and Puhua Tang
Smooth capsule robot, spiral capsule robot, spiral pitch, spiral groove depth, operational mode
Capsule endoscopes (i.e., capsule robots) are mainly used in the human gastrointestinal examination, especially small intestine. At present, the structure of capsule endoscopes in clinical application is the smooth capsule. Whether the spiral structure is conducive to improve the operational performance of capsule endoscopes without changing its operational stability needs to be further studied. In this paper, by the developed fluid field measuring system for magnetically driven capsule robots, the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technology is adopted to test the surrounding fluid velocity of capsule robots with different spiral pitches and groove depths. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is further applied to calculate the fluid velocity and turbulent intensity around the capsule robot, the resistance and drag torque to the capsule robot in the moving direction, and the pressure on the pipe. The results show that the operational performance of the smooth capsule robot driven by permanent magnets is better than that of the spiral capsule robot. When the spiral pitch of the capsule robot is decreased and the spiral groove depth of the capsule robot is increased, the resistance and drag torque to the capsule robot, the surrounding fluid turbulent intensity and the maximum pressure on the pipe wall are all increased. The operational mode of precession will increase the energy consumption and operational instability of the capsule robot.
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