Abstract
Air cylinder is the main pneumatic actuator, which is widely used in robots, automated production lines, intelligent equipment and other fields. There is a strong non-linearity in the friction force of the cylinder due to the visco-elasticity of rubber sealing material, which seriously affects the stability of the cylinder movement. O-ring seals are the most commonly used seals for cylinder seals. In this paper, the typical O-ring seals have been used as the research object, and the cylinder dynamic seal friction testing platform is developed for systematically studying the dynamic friction behavior of the cylinder, which combines the finite element method. Firstly, the cylinder friction behavior are studied under different speeds and pressures based on the testing platform. Then, the law of macroscopic deformation and microscopic contact morphology of O-ring seals in sliding process are revealed. Finally, an axisymmetric sliding model of the cylinder is developed by Abaqus, and the influence of rubber sealing material properties, compression amount, and air pressure on the friction force have been studied for revealing its dynamic friction characteristics. Results show that when the rubber elastic modulus increases, the friction force increases; air pressure affects the deformation of the rubber seal structure, and then affects the cylinder friction dynamic behavior; the dynamic friction behavior mechanism of cylinder in sliding process is revealed by the combination method of experiment and simulation, which lays a theoretical foundation for the accurate positioning of cylinder.
Keywords: Cylinder, Rubber seal, Dynamic friction, Finite element analysis