In this study, the configuration of a bionic horse robot for equine-assisted therapy is presented. A single-leg system with two degrees of freedom (DOFs) is driven by a cam-linkage mechanism, and it can adjust the span and height of the leg end-point trajectory. After a brief introduction on the quadruped bionic horse robot, the structure and working principle of a single-leg system are discussed in detail. Kinematic analysis of a single-leg system is conducted, and the relationships between the structural parameters and leg trajectory are obtained. On this basis, the pressure angle characteristics of the cam-linkage mechanism are studied, and the leg end-point trajectories of the robot are obtained for several inclination angles controlled by the rotation of the motor for the stride length adjusting. The closed-loop vector method is used for the kinematic analysis, and the motion analysis system is developed in MATLAB software. The motion analysis results are verified by a three-dimensional simulation model developed in Solidworks software. The presented research on the configuration, kinematic modeling, and pressure angle characteristics of the bionic horse robot lays the foundation for subsequent research on the practical application of the proposed bionic horse robot.

An ankle joint auxiliary rehabilitation robot has been developed, which consists of an upper platform, a lower platform, a dorsiflexion/plantar flexion drive system, a varus/valgus drive system, and some connecting parts. The upper platform connects to the lower platform through a ball pin pair and two driving branch chains based on the S′PS′ mechanism. Although the robot has two degrees of freedom (DOF), the upper platform can realize three kinds of motion. To achieve ankle joint auxiliary rehabilitation, the ankle joint of patients on the upper platform makes a bionic motion. The robot uses a centre ball pin pair as the main support to simulate the motion of the ankle joint; the upper platform and the centre ball pin pair construct a mirror image of a patient’s foot and ankle joint, which satisfies the human body physiological characteristics; the driving systems adopt a rigid-flexible hybrid structure; and the dorsiflexion/plantar flexion motion and the varus/valgus motion are decoupled. These structural features can avoid secondary damage to the patient. The rehabilitation process is considered, and energy consumption of the robot is studied. An experimental prototype demonstrates that the robot can simulate the motion of the human foot.

A numerical optimum study on three-dimensional unsteady viscous flow in a centrifugal fan with backward-curved blades was performed. The influence of the inlet angle, the outlet blade angle and blade number on aerodynamic performance of the centrifugal fan was analyzed concerning the whole impeller-volute configuration. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) based on a three-level, three -variable Box-Behnken Design (BBD) was used to evaluate the interactive effects of factors such as inlet blade angle (37°-41°), outlet blade angle (61°-65°) and number of blade (10-14) on the efficiency. The optimum factors deriving via RSM were: inlet blade angle 37°, outlet blade angle 61.7° and blade number 14. The maximum efficiency was 93.7%, under optimum conditions. The method of reliable CFD technique in combination with RSM can be effectively applied to the improvement and experiment design of centrifugal fans.

Optimizing the volute performance can effectively improve the efficiency of a centrifugal fan by changing the volute geometric parameter, so the self‐adaption Kriging surrogate model is used to optimize the volute geometric parameter. Firstly, volute radius R _d , the radius of tongue r , and outlet angle of the volute θ are selected as the optimization parameters of the volute, and latin hypercube sampling is used to configure the initial sample points, the corresponding three‐dimensional aerodynamic model under each sample point configuration is constructed. CFD software is used to simulate the aerodynamic efficiency and total pressure of the centrifugal fan under each initial sample point configuration. Secondly, the Kriging surrogate model of initial sample point configuration parameters, aerodynamic efficiency, and total pressure of volute is constructed, and sample points are added by expectation improvement (EI) method to improve the fitting accuracy of Kriging surrogate model. Finally, the high‐precision Kriging surrogate model is used as the fitness function of NSGA‐II algorithm to find the Pareto optimal solution under multiobjective optimization, and the optimization target are aero dynamical efficiency and total pressure. The rationality of the above method is verified by optimizing the 9–19.4A type centrifugal fan volute. The efficiency of the optimized fan under working conditions is increased by 1%, and the total pressure under working conditions is not reduced. The optimized volute can effectively improve the overall performance of the centrifugal fan. This study is helpful to promote the application of numerical optimization design method in the volute of centrifugal fan. It provides reference for the optimization design of high‐performance centrifugal fan.

Students' Graduation Project Training for Mechanical Design Specialty Based on Light Industries Transformation