Type Synthesis of Fully-Decoupled 3R2T Parallel Mechanisms Based on Driven-Chain Principle

To avoid the existence of nonlinear and strong coupling in parallel mechanisms,it is necessary to address special care to the type synthesis of mechanisms,especially for the type synthesis of fully-decoupled parallel mechanisms. Based on the screw theory and the driven-chain principle,a methodology of structural synthesis for fully-decoupled three-rotational（ 3R） and two-translational（ 2T）parallel mechanisms was proposed by analyzing the characteristics of the input-output relations for fully-decoupled parallel mechanisms.Firstly,according to the desired kinematic characteristics of fullydecoupled parallel mechanisms,a method was presented by virtue of screw theory to synthesize the desired forms for both the direct and the inverse Jacobian matrices. Secondly,according to the feature of the direct and the inverse Jacobian matrices,the effective screws,the actuated screws and the mobile un-actuated screws of each leg were established based on the reciprocal screw theory and all possible topology structures fulfilling the requirements were obtained.Finally,the desired fully-decoupled parallel mechanisms could be synthesized by using the structural synthesis rule and structural synthesis of fully-decoupled 3R2 T parallel mechanisms could be obtained exploiting the abovementioned methodology. Furthermore,the Jacobian matrix of a synthesized 3R2 T parallel mechanism was deduced to demonstrate the decoupling feature of the parallel mechanism,which also validated the correctness of the methodology of the type synthesis for fully-decoupled 3R2 T parallel mechanisms.