A building block-like approach for kinematic analysis of plane mechanisms

Abstract

Powerful packages based on multibody dynamics can solve virtually any dynamic system. But to the user they are black boxes. Kinematic analysis of plane mechanisms is vital to mechanical engineering. This analysis hardly requires such versatile tools. Further blind usage of these powerful tools does not permit the user to develop insight into the mechanisms. On the other hand, packages based on simple but modular approach are ideally suited for the purpose. The aim of the preset work is to rigorously define the independently solvable modules and to develop a program using these modules, on MATLAB platform, which can solve a large variety of plane mechanisms.