Topological Synthesis of Planar Metamorphic Mechanisms using Sub-Graph Constraints

MARTÍN PUCHETA; AGOSTINO BUTTI; VALERIO TAMELLINI; ALBERTO CARDONA; LUCA GHEZZI

MECHANICS BASED DESIGN OF STRUCTURES AND MACHINES

TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC

Año: 2012 vol. 40 p. 453 - 468

1539-7734

This paper presents a systematic Graph Theory based method for the topological synthesis of planar metamorphic mechanisms including metamorphic transformations of links and changes in the degrees-of-freedom (DOF). The parts to move, with input and output motion defined, and the topological design space are represented by graphs of simple-jointed mechanisms. The topological requirements involving link transformations are expressed in terms of sub-graphs with a given DOF containing prescribed input and output parts. The algorithm executes two sub-graph searches inside atlases of mechanisms with different DOFs. An application to the design of a family of low-voltage circuit-breaker mechanisms is shown.