Equimomental System and Its Applications

This paper presents a study of an equimomental system and its application. The equimomental system of point-masses for a rigid body moving in plane and space system is studied. Sets of three and seven equimomental point-masses are proposed for a planar and spatial motion, respectively. The set of equimomental point-masses is then applied for the optimization of dynamic performance characteristics of a mechanism, e.g, shaking forces and moments, driving torques, bearing reactions, etc. The Newton-Euler equations of motion of a link undergoing planar motion are formulated systematically in the parameters related to the point-masses, which leads to an optimization scheme for the mass distribution of the links to improve the dynamic performances. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is shown by applying it to a multiloop mechanism of carpet scrapping machine. A significant improvement in all the dynamic performance characteristics is obtained compared to those of the original mechanism.