A survey of instantaneous poles for a class of two-degree-of-freedom spherical mechanisms

Abstract

This paper is a detailed exploration of instantaneous poles for a class of two-degree-of-freedom (two-DOF) spherical mechanisms (SMs) with seven links or bars. For two-DOF SMs, the secondary instantaneous poles (the ones which cannot be found by direct inspection) must lie on the specified great circles. For many of these mechanisms, however, some of these great circles cannot be obtained by a direct application of Aronhold-Kennedy theorem. This paper presents geometrical and analytical techniques to locate these unknown great circles for three topologies of seven-bar two-DOF SMs.

Keywords

spherical mechanisms / instantaneous poles / Aronhold-Kennedy theorem / great circles / pencil of meridian

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