Unified structural synthesis of planar simple and multiple joint kinematic chains

A unified structural synthesis theory for the variety of kinematic chains, rather than varied methods for varied kinds of kinematic chains, is much more convenient for both the study of the mechanism theory and its applications. This paper proposes a novel structural synthesis method for kinematic chains with multiple joints which is derived from the well developed structural synthesis theory of simple joint kinematic chains and theirs atlas database technique [ H. F. Ding, Z. Huang, Mech. Mach. Theory 2007 42( 6) 637-651]. First, a novel topological graph, namely the new bicolor topological graph, for the representation of the multiple joint kinematic chain is presented, which is derived from the topological graph of the simple joint kinematic chain. Then the structural synthesis method of multiple joint kinematic chains based on the new bicolor topological graph is presented. One of the merits of the method is that it unifies the structural synthesis of simple joint kinematic chains with multiple joint kinematic chains. In addition, isomorphism identification, one of the most difficult problems in structural synthesis, becomes unnecessary with this synthesis method. Finally, all multiple joint kinematic chains with several specific numbers of links, degrees-of-freedom, and numbers of multiple joints are synthesized in batch as examples to show the effectiveness of the method. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.