Branch identification of geared five-bar chains

This paper presents the method to identify the rotatability and branch condition in linkages containing simple geared five-bar chains, The method is subsequently extended to identify the existence of dead positions. When used in the computer aided linkage synthesis, the algorithm may effectively reduce the complexity of the finite position synthesis of geared five-bar linkages to the level similar to that of four-bar linkages. The algorithm is effective for any linkage inversion, any type of synthesis problem, any input condition, and tiny number of discrete positions. The method can be generalized to other serially connected multiloop linkages.