On Traveler Braking Mechanism Design with Elastic Deflection and Buckling Considerations#

Abstract

In conventional planar four-bar motion generation, all mechanism links are assumed rigid or nondeforming. Although the assumption of link rigidity in kinematic synthesis may be generally appropriate and often practiced, a statically loaded planar four-bar mechanism will undergo a degree of elastic deflection, particularly the crank and follower links. In this work, a nonlinear optimization problem is formulated for planar four-bar motion generation that considers an applied coupler force and corresponding crank static torque, crank transverse deflection, and follower buckling. This work is an extension of the author' published work on planar four-bar motion generation with a static torque constraint (Al-Smadi et al., 2009). The included example demonstrates the synthesis of a traveler braking mechanism with limited crank deflection and without follower buckling in addition to the constraints considered in the author' published work.