NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF DISPLACEMENTS IN SPATIAL MECHANISMS WITH SPHERICAL JOINTS UTILIZING AN EXTENDED D-H NOTATION

Abstract

Spherical joints consist of a pair of concave and convex spherical surfaces engaged in such a way as to prevent translational motion of the ball and socket whilst simultaneously allowing three degrees of rotational freedom. The kinematics of spatial mechanisms comprising links and joints are commonly analyzed using the Denavit-Hartenberg (D-H) notation. However, whilst this method allows the kinematics of mechanisms containing prismatic, revolute, helical and cylindrical joints to be explicitly defined, it cannot be directly applied to mechanical systems containing spherical pairs. Accordingly, this paper proposes an extended D-H notation which allows the independent parameters of any spatial mechanism, including one with spherical pairs, to be derived for analysis and synthesis purposes. The validity of the proposed notation is demonstrated via its application to the analysis of mechanisms containing revolute (R), spherical (S), cylindrical (C) and prismatic (P) joints. The results confirm the viability of the extended D-H notation as a means of analyzing the displacements of mechanical systems containing kinematic chains such as RSCR, RSCP, CSSR and CSSP.