Dimensional synthesis of four-bar mechanisms using Rao algorithms and their variants

Abstract

This paper presents the dimensional synthesis of four-bar mechanisms for path generation. The synthesis of the four-bar mechanisms is proposed using nine advanced optimization algorithms, namely the Rao-1 algorithm, Rao-2 algorithm, Rao-3 algorithm, self-adaptive multi-population (SAMP) Rao-1 algorithm, SAMP Rao-2 algorithm, SAMP Rao-3 algorithm, quasi-oppositional-based (QO) Rao-1 algorithm, QO Rao-2 algorithm, and QO Rao-3 algorithm. Six different cases of synthesis of a four-bar mechanism are considered. The brief literature review based on the synthesis of mechanisms is also presented. The designs of mechanisms obtained using Rao algorithms and their variants are compared with the designs acquired using other advanced optimization algorithms, such as genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, differential evolution (DE), imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA), hybrid GA-DE algorithm, simulated annealing (SA), Malaga university mechanism synthesis algorithm (MUMSA), IMMa optimization algorithm (IOA), hybrid Taguchi random coordinate search algorithm (HTRCA), hybrid GA and fuzzy logic (GA–FL) algorithm, ant-gradient method (AGM), teaching–learning-based optimization algorithm (TLBO), and hybrid Lagrange interpolation differential evolution algorithm (HLIDE). The comparison of results reveals the efficacy of Rao algorithms and their variants for synthesizing the four-bar mechanism.