Gene model based conceptual design of mechanism variation

Traditional mechanism variation is complex. The genetic expressions of component and kinematic pair composed of inheritance characteristic, variation characteristic and the set of link characteristics, and the genetic expressions of mechanism composed of components characteristic matrix, kinematic pair characteristic matrix and link relation matrix, were summarized by analyzing the comparability between the principle of biologic genetic inheritance and variation and that of mechanism variation. And a mechanism gene model was created according to the genetic expressions of mechanism. Three rules of mechanism gene variation, according to which six variation operations on the mechanism gene model including voluntary variation, extreme variation, interchanged variation, reversed variation, recombinant variation and hybrid variation were proposed by simulating biological gene mutation, were concluded in order to reserve the inheritance characteristics of the mechanism. The steps of gene model based conceptual design of mechanism variation were explained and the design feasibility was proved by having obtained two variation mechanisms using the method proposed to take variation operations on the original mechanism composed of planar six-bar mechanism, planar four-bar mechanism and ratchet mechanism etc.