Structural synthesis towards intelligent design of plane mechanisms: Current status and future research trend

Abstract

The creative design of mechanisms has been widely believed as one of the most important branches in the theory of mechanisms. Beside, the structural synthesis of kinematic chains (KCs) of mechanisms has been well-known as a fundamental technique for establishing novel theories towards intelligent design of mechanisms. This has thus motivated an increasing number of researchers to devote their efforts to exploiting new methods and techniques for structural synthesis of mechanisms over the past half century. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review on the structural synthesis methods for various plane KCs and mechanisms, including contracted graphs of KCs, non-fractionated and fractionated simple joint KCs, inversions of KCs, KCs with prismatic pairs, multiple joint KCs, Baranov trusses and Assur groups, as well as the automatic sketching of KCs. Moreover, the idea of intelligent design based on the automatic synthesis of mechanisms is discussed. The presented review discusses the history of structural synthesis of mechanisms and the recent research progress, and concludes the research trends and future work in this area, offering theoretical guidance for people engaged in the structural synthesis and intelligent design of mechanisms.