The Study of the Effective Contact Area of Suction Cup 2021-01-0298

As the industry moves further into the automotive age, the failure of the cup during the transportation of the parts during the assembly process is costly. Among them, the effective contact area of the suction cup could influence the significant availability of the pressure, which is necessary to investigate the truth. The essential objective for this research is trying to improve the effectiveness of the suction cups during gripers work in company’s industry. In this research, the real work condition is simulated by the experimental setup to find the influence of the effective contact area. In this paper, the proper methodology to measure the effective area by testing different size cups under different conditions is described. The results are verified by the digital image correlation (DIC) technique. It proves that the DIC method is a precise way to measure the effective contact area of the suction cup and determine the angle between the cup membrane and contact surface in the vacuumed cup. The objective of this project is to improve the suction cup design by investigating the effective contact area.