Kinematics of coupler curves for spherical four-bar linkages based on new spherical adjoint approach

Abstract

The local and global geometric properties of spherical coupler curves constitute spherical kinematics of spherical four-bar linkages, which can be adopted to reveal distribution characteristics of spherical coupler curves. New unified spherical adjoint approach is established in the paper to study both the local and global geometric properties in order to enrich the atlas of spherical coupler curves with geometric characteristics. Since the constraint curve of spherical four-bar linkage is a simple spherical circle and the spherical centrodes imply intrinsic properties of spherical motion of the coupler link, they are in their turn taken as the original curves in spherical adjoint approach to derive the geodesic curvature and analyze the local geometric characteristics of the spherical coupler curves. The conditions for different spherical double points, such as spherical crunodes, tacnodes and cusps of the spherical coupler curve are derived through the spherical adjoint approach. The spherical surface of the coupler link can be divided into several areas by the spherical moving centrode and the spherical tacnode's tracer curve. The points in each area trace spherical coupler curves with a specific shape. The characteristic points, which trace spherical coupler curves with cusp, geodesic inflection point, spherical Ball point, spherical Burmester point, crunode and tacnode can be readily located in the coupler link by the modelling procedure and the derived condition equations. In the end the distribution of spherical coupler curves with both local and global characteristics is elaborated. The research proposes systematic geometric properties of spherical coupler curves based on the new established approach, and provides a solid theoretical basis for the kinematic analysis and synthesis of the spherical four-bar linkages.