Cable painting robot for cable-stayed bridges

Many cable-stayed bridges have been built in the world in the past decades, but there is no method that is safe and economically efficient for stay cable maintenance. A cable painting robot has been developed including a cable climbing base and a cable painting system. The cable climbing base has a plate type frame and a pressing adjuster with a hydraulic pressure cylinder controlled manually or remotely. Its outline size, the velocity range, the maximum payload and the suitable cable diameter range are phi 750 x 1000, 1 similar to 10m/min, 250kg and phi 90 similar to 160 respectively. The coat evenness of the cable is modelled by using of the beta distribution. Both simulations and experiments indicated that four airless spray guns can be uniform distribution adopted to win good coat quality for general stay cables. The field tests on the Nanpu Bridge has been successfully made.