The synthesis of mechanism systems using a mechanism concept library

This paper presents an approach for synthesizing all possible mechanism systems of kinematic building blocks in a mechanism concept library. The kinematic building blocks are defined as SISO primitive mechanisms, and their serial and/or parallel combinations are expressed as corresponding out-trees based on graph representation. By representing the constructive building blocks as labeled vertices and their possible combination relationships as directed edges, the synthesis approach is developed by adopting graph enumeration theorem. An illustrative example of four kinematic building blocks, including two crank-rocker linkages and two slider-crank mechanisms, is provided to validate the presented approach. The result shows that all feasible mechanism systems can be obtained effectively by following the synthesis method and which provides more alternatives in the library during design or re-design of mechanisms.