Kinematic synthesis of planar five-bar mechanisms for multi-phase motion generation

This work presents a method to design planar five-bar mechanisms to achieve multiple phases of prescribed rigid body path points. Using this method, these mechanisms are designed to achieve multiple phases of prescribed rigid body path points using the same hardware. This synthesis method accommodates one DOF belted, geared and chain driven five bar mechanisms or two DOF five-bar mechanisms. By prescribing the angular positions of one driving link with respect to the synthesized moving pivot positions of the other driving link, the positions of both driving links are timed. The parameters of one driving link and the links to be determined in this mechanism are synthesized using constant length constraint equations given the prescribed rigid body path points. The example problem in this work considers a two-phase moving pivot adjustment (with constant link lengths) of a planar five bar mechanism.