On nonassembly in the optimal dimensional synthesis of planar mechanisms

This paper presents a general method for treating nonassembly in the optimal synthesis of planar mechanisms. The synthesis is performed with gradient based optimization algorithms and the sensitivities are calculated analytically through the method of direct differentiation. The analysis is based on the well-established and general method of computational kinematics. In this study the residuals of the joint constraint equations are minimized rather than equated to zero. This makes it possible to perform the kinematic analysis for any proposed design even though it may not be possible to assemble the mechanism. Several examples are provided.