A method for structure coupling-reducing of parallel mechanisms

Abstract

Structure coupling degree is used to describe the topological structure complexity of a mechanism. While structure coupling-reducing can reduces such complexity. But the topic is little being studied so far. This paper studies the principle, design method and application of the structure coupling-reducing of the mechanisms. Firstly, a novel concept is proposed which defines the structure coupling-reducing (SCR). The differences and relations of the structure coupling-reducing (SCR) and motion decoupling (MD) are also revealed. Then a SCR method is proposed, which requires to change the position and orientation characteristics chain into a driving chain and meanwhile remove one unconstrained driving chain. At last, two SCR examples are illustrated, which offers good application potential. The SCR principle and SCR method can be applied to all spatial mechanisms. They are of great significance in topological structure optimization, kinematics solution, real-time control.