Articles | Volume 7, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/ms-7-39-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/ms-7-39-2016
Research article
 | 
09 Feb 2016
Research article |  | 09 Feb 2016

A representation of the configurations and evolution of metamorphic mechanisms

W. Zhang, X. Ding, and J. Liu

Abstract. Metamorphic mechanisms are members of the class of mechanisms that are able to change their configurations sequentially to meet different requirements. The paper introduces a comprehensive symbolic matrix representation for characterizing the topology of one of these mechanisms in a single configuration using general information concerning links and joints. Furthermore, a matrix representation of an original metamorphic mechanism that has the ability to evolve is proposed by uniting the matrices representing all of the mechanism's possible configurations. The representation of metamorphic kinematic joints is developed in accordance with the variation laws of these mechanisms. By introducing the joint variation matrices derived from generalized operations on the related symbolic adjacency matrices, evolutionary relationships between mechanisms in adjacent configurations and the original metmaorphic mechanism are made distinctly. Examples are provided to demonstrate the validation of the method.

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Short summary
The paper introduces a comprehensive symbolic matrix representation for characterizing the topology of a metamorphic mechanism using general information concerning links and joints. Operations on the matrices of the adjacent configuration mechanisms are defined to construct an origin matrix and joint variation matrices. The representation of the configurations and evolution of metamorphic Mechanisms provides a foundation for the analysis and synthesis of novel metamorphic mechanisms.