Exact Displacement Analysis of Four-Link Spatial Mechanisms by the Direction Cosine Matrix Method

A method of displacement analysis of the four-link spatial mechanism is developed. The results through this analysis will be exact solutions that can be obtained without resorting to numerical or iteration schemes. In the analysis, the position of a link in a mechanism can be fully defined if its direction and length are known. Therefore, this analysis involves the calculation of the unknown direction cosines and length of each link for a given configuration of the mechanism. In finding the direction cosines of the unknown unit vectors involved for each link and rotating axis, two types of coordinates, the global and the local, are generally used. Then, a direction cosine matrix between each local coordinate system and the global coordinates is established. Thus, the unknown direction cosines of the local coordinates, the links, and the rotating axes are obtained in global coordinates. In this development, direction cosine matrices are used throughout the analysis. As an illustration, the application of this method to the study of four-link spatial mechanisms, RGGR, RGCR, RRGG, and RRGC will be presented.