On the Number of Specialized Mechanisms

This work presents a systematic procedure for completely generating the number of non-isomorphic specialized mechanisms from kinematic chains subject to design constraints for planar mechanisms. By assigning the specific types of members and joints in the available atlas of candidate kinematic chains, the atlas of specialized mechanisms are obtained. Furthermore, based on the combinatorial mathematics, the number of specialized mechanisms are counted and verified from the mathematical expressions. A motorcross suspension mechanism and the interior mechanism of Zhang Heng’s seismoscope are used as examples to illustrate this procedure.