Published Paper Details:

Motion transmission to meet the specific requirement is an important aspect of mechanical engineering. Linkages, gear-trains, cams, etc. are commonly adopted to fulfill this need. Kinematic analysis and synthesis of linkages, gear-trains, etc. is a major area of study in mechanical engineering. Structural synthesis of all the distinct possible kinematic chains with the specified number of links and degrees of freedom is necessary in order to select the best possible chain for the specified task at the conceptual stage of design. The structural synthesis should not end only with the generation of distinct chains as it does not lead to logical conclusion unless the capabilities of the structures are explored. The accuracy of generation of kinematic chain depends upon the accuracy for the test for isomorphism. Consequently, some methods are developed to test isomorphism and many of these methods fail at some stage or the other. Most of the methods in structural analysis have been reported to test isomorphism and inversions, but the methods reported so far is either based on link-link adjacency, link-joint adjacency or link-loop adjacency.But all the three important features of kinematic chains viz. link-joint-loop have not been considered for the exact assessment. Keeping in view, quantitative methods are being developed in this paper to detect isomorphism among kinematic chains which includes link-joint-loop adjacency. The method developed for testing isomorphism and other characteristics will result in many aspect e.g. reliability, computational time, efficiency, etc. Since, all the three features of kinematic chains viz. link-joint-loop are considered to analyze the structural aspect and its relation to function; the expected outcome will reveal some kinematic characteristics of the chain with high degree of reliability and efficiency for application in planar manipulators from the viewpoint of workspace.