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ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA

   

Investigation of a Family of Spatial Symmetric 6R Mechanisms and its Application

  

  • Received:2014-02-20 Revised:2014-05-07 Published:2014-05-08

Abstract: The deployable panel structures are widely used in aerospace applications, such as planar antennas, solar panels, etc. The spatial mechanisms have the advantage on good stiffness and compact structure. In order to improve the stiffness and deploying-packing ratio of the deployable panel structures, the spatial symmetric 6R mechanisms are applied to the deployable panel structures. According to the constraints, the geometrical parameters of the spatial 3R kinematic chain are firstly derived. Then, the constraint screw system of 3R chain is analyzed with screw theory. According to the symmetry characteristic, the kinematic features, such as mobility, singularity, etc., of this family of spatial symmetric 6R mechanisms are investigated. Based on that, a special symmetric 6R rotating mechanism is proposed. Finally, the assemblies of the spatial symmetric 6R mechanisms are studied and a novel deployable panel assembly structure, which has single degree of freedom, is proposed and validated by the kinematics simulation. This mechanism has the capability of deploying and packing in two dimensions. The achievement provides helpful references for designing novel deployable panel structure.

Key words: deployable mechanism, degrees of freedom, mechanism assembly, singularity configuration, screw theory