Return to previous page

The dynamics of machines and mechanisms deals with the laws of motion of the components of mechanisms, control of the motion of the components, determination of frictional losses, determination of the reactions in kinematic pairs, and balancing of machines and mechanisms. In recent years, there has been accelerated progress in the development of parallel manipulators given their well-known advantages over the serial manipulators in terms of accuracy, repeatability, velocity, rigidity and load-carrying capacity. However, despite all the effort invested in the study of these manipulators, to this day, such architectures continue presenting a number of drawbacks, e.g., a reduced work space, limited dexterity, complex architecture, a direct kinematic model difficult to solve and the presence of multiple singular configurations, and a number of problems that increase in complexity as more kinematic chains and degrees of freedom are added to the mechanical system. This book covers a number of kinematic performance indices that are instrumental in designing parallel kinematics manipulators. These indices can be used selectively based on manipulator requirements and functionality. This would provide the very practical tool for designers to approach their needs in a very comprehensive fashion. Nevertheless, most applications require a more composite set of requirements that makes optimizing performance more challenging.

This book presents state of the art research and reviews focused on the development of the kinematics and dynamics; in this way, we can find the evolution of the kinematics in current years, such as applications in navigation systems, parallel robots, manipulators, and mobile robots. This work also includes new methods for the analysis in different applications, which are important in the proposal of new paradigms. It is aimed at covering design theory and methodology, kinematics of mechanisms, rotor dynamics, computational kinematics, multibody dynamics, and dynamics of machinery, transportation machinery, control and reliability of mechanical systems.

This book will be of interest to engineers and scientists engaged in research and development within the fields.