Design of the Deployable Mechanisms Based on the Cardanic Motion of Planar Four-Bar Linkage

A deployable mechanism is a mechanism that is designed to be repeatedly expanded and contracted without failure. Most deployable mechanisms are over-constrained mechanisms with a mobility of one. Although many deployable mechanisms had been proposed and employed in application in the past decades, few generalized methodologies for the synthesis of both planar and spatial deployable mechanisms are available. In this paper, a systematic methodology, based on the Cardanic motion of planar linkage, for the synthesis of both the spatial and planar deployable mechanisms is presented. By using the characteristics that some of the coupler points of Cardanic linkages are able to move along a straight line, a building unit mechanism that utilizes such a linkage can be extended or retracted as desired. Once the boundary conditions of the building unit mechanisms are obtained, design of an entire deployable mechanism, planar or spatial, can be fulfilled. After the design is achieved, motion of the synthesized mechanism is simulated in Pro/Engineer, and the prototype of a planar model is manufactured for the justification of this method.