Slider Mechanism Motion as a Contact Problem.

A stiffness approach is at first generally described for mechanism motion analysis. The kinematic system is regarded as an instable elastic structure and the tangent stiffness equations are updated for the current mechanism configuration. The obtained singular stiffness matrix is then used to predict incremental rigid-body motions. The nonlinear incremental mechanism equations are established and its solution procedure is proposed to follow successively the mechanism motion in an incremental/iterative manner. Secondly, the tangent stiffness matrix is obtained by formulating the slider mechanism motion as a contact problem. The proposed nonlinear scheme and the obtained stiffness matrix for the slider mechanism prove to work well in computed numerical examples. The stiffness approach in the present study may be incorporated into existing finite-element program systems and can be applied to general three-dimensional mechanisms.