FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF HIGH SPEED FLEXIBLE FOUR-BAR MECHANISMS

Abstract

A procedure is presented For analysing planar four-bar mechanisms with elastic links and distributed mass, operating at prescribed input rotational speeds. The governing mechanism aquations are derived using the Lagrange equation and include the effects of longitudinal loads on transverse deflections, rotary inertia and shear deformations. These equations, which are discretized by the finite element method, are transformed and assembled to generate the governing differential equations for the mechanism. Using the Runge-Kutta method, these equations are integrated, yielding displacements and stresses as functions of time.