Similarity recognition of kinematic chains (KCs) is an important part of the mechanism innovation design, which can avoid isomorphism in the synthesis process and reduce the generation of redundant design schemes. In this paper, the new concepts of a loop tree (LT) and a loop tree matrix (LTM) have been proposed, which improve the efficiency of similarity recognition.

To obtain all mechanical schemes, scholars in this field have proposed an innovative design method using kinematic chain configuration synthesis. However, the existing innovative design method easily produces redundant design schemes. We analyze the similar component discrimination method for mechanisms from the perspective of graph theory and apply it to the specialization of topological graphs to solve the problem of redundant design schemes.

In the early stage of the creative design of mechanisms, design work was accomplished mainly based on researchers' experience and inspiration, resulting in a low design efficiency. Moreover, the derived mechanism configurations were very limited. An effective mechanism design method is based on the atlas of topological structures of kinematic chains. Our research on the structural synthesis of kinematic chain inversions plays an important role in the improvement of mechanism design efficiency.