A pure-inertia method for dynamic balancing of symmetric planar mechanisms

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel method for the dynamic balance of planar mechanisms, by transforming a mechanism into a dynamically equivalent form where all links have zero mass but non-zero moment of inertia. The dynamic balance of such pure-inertia systems is shown to be governed by mirror symmetry that cancels out the system’s total angular momentum. Our method not only covers well-known dynamically balanced 1-DOF mechanisms, such as the slider-crank and four-bar linkages, but also leads to the discovery of a novel dynamically balanced 2-DOF planar mechanism.