An Energy Approach to Static Balancing of Systems With Torsion Stiffness

Static balance can be applied to improve energy efficiency of mechanisms. In the field of static balancing, a lack of knowledge and design methods exists that are capable of dealing with torsional stiffness. This paper presents a design approach for statically balanced mechanisms, with the focus on mechanisms with torsional stiffness. The approach is graphical of nature and it is based on the requirement of constant potential energy. The first achievements of the presented approach are presented as five conceptual designs of four different types of mechanisms. One of them is developed further into a prototype, which has been tested. The prototype has a correlation coefficient of 0.96 and a normalized mean squared error of 0.12 with respect to the mechanical model of the conceptual design.