Graphical Methods to Locate the Secondary Instant Centers of Single-Degree-of-Freedom Indeterminate Linkages

Abstract

This paper presents graphical techniques to locate the unknown instantaneous centers of zero velocity of planar, single-degree-of-freedom, linkages with kinematic indeterminacy. The approach is to convert a single-degree-of-freedom indeterminate linkage into a two-degree-of-freedom linkage. Two methods are presented to perform this conversion. The first method is to remove a binary link and the second method is to replace a single link with a pair of links connected by a revolute joint. First, the paper shows that a secondary instant center of a two-degree-of-freedom linkage must lie on a unique straight line. Then this property is used to locate a secondary instant center of the single-degree-of-freedom indeterminate linkage at the intersection of two lines. The two lines are obtained from a purely graphical procedure. The graphical techniques presented in this paper are illustrated by three examples of single-degree-of-freedom linkages with kinematic indeterminacy. The examples are a ten-bar linkage with only revolute joints, the single flier eight-bar linkage, and a ten-bar linkage with revolute and prismatic joints.