A Constraint Solving-Based Approach to Analyze 2D Geometric Problems With Interval Parameters

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Joan-Arinyo ◽  
N. Mata ◽  
A. Soto-Riera

Many applications of geometric nature can be modeled by geometric problems defined by constraints in which the constraint parameters have interval uncertainty. In a previous work, we developed a method for solving geometric constraint problems where parameters are narrow intervals in the domain of the geometric problem. Based on this work, we present a new approach to solve more general problems with non-trivial-width interval parameters that may not necessarily be in the domain of the problem. We show how our approach is successfully applied to a number of problems like solving geometric problems with tolerances, checking constraint feasibility and analyzing link motion of planar mechanisms.

Author(s):  
D J A Simpson ◽  
J E L Simmons ◽  
G Moldovean

This paper describes a new approach to the kinematic analysis of planar mechanisms. The basis of the analytical method is a generic four-bar sub-mechanism which is used as the single building block from which other composite mechanisms may be created. A computer program has been written embodying this method and has been demonstrated to operate successfully providing animated displays of displacement, velocity and acceleration diagrams for a wide range of complex mechanisms.


Author(s):  
J. Hamel ◽  
M. Li ◽  
S. Azarm

Uncertainty in the input parameters to an engineering system may not only degrade the system’s performance, but may also cause failure or infeasibility. This paper presents a new sensitivity analysis based approach called Design Improvement by Sensitivity Analysis (DISA). DISA analyzes the interval parameter uncertainty of a system and, using multi-objective optimization, determines an optimal combination of design improvements required to enhance performance and ensure feasibility. This is accomplished by providing a designer with options for both uncertainty reduction and, more importantly, slight design adjustments. The approach can provide improvements to a design of interest that will ensure a minimal amount of variation in the objective functions of the system while also ensuring the engineering feasibility of the system. A two stage sequential framework is used in order to effectively employ metamodeling techniques to approximate the analysis function of an engineering system and greatly increase the computational efficiency of the approach. This new approach has been applied to two engineering examples of varying difficulty to demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness.


Author(s):  
Nadim Diab

This paper presents a new graphical technique to locate the secondary instantaneous centers of zero velocity (ICs) for one-degree-of-freedom (1-DOF) kinematically indeterminate planar mechanisms. The proposed approach is based on transforming the 1-DOF mechanism into a 2-DOF counterpart by converting any ground-pivoted ternary link into two ground-pivoted binary links. Fixing each of these two new binary links, one at a time, results in two different 1-DOF mechanisms where the intersection of the loci of their instantaneous centers will determine the location of the desired instantaneous center for the original 1-DOF mechanism. This single and consistent approach proved to be successful in locating the ICs of various mechanisms reported in the literature that required different techniques to reach the same results obtained herein.


Author(s):  
Ahmad Smaili ◽  
Nadim Diab

The aim of this article is to provide a simple method to solve the mixed exact-approximate dimensional synthesis problem of planar mechanism. The method results in a mechanism that can traverse a closed path with the choice of any number of exact points while the rest are approximate points. The algorithm is based on optimum synthesis rather than on precision position methods. Ant-gradient search is applied on an objective function based on log10 of the error between the desired positions and those generated by the optimum solution. The log10 function discriminates on the side of generating miniscule errors (on the order of 10−14) at the exact points while allowing for higher errors at the approximate positions. The algorithm is tested by way of five examples. One of these examples was used to test exact/approximate synthesis method based on precision point synthesis approach.


Author(s):  
Jianhua Zhou ◽  
Mian Li

Uncertainty is inevitable in real world. It has to be taken into consideration, especially in engineering optimization; otherwise the obtained optimal solution may become infeasible. Robust optimization (RO) approaches have been proposed to deal with this issue. Most existing RO algorithms use double-looped structures in which a large amount of computational efforts have been spent in the inner loop optimization to determine the robustness of candidate solutions. In this paper, an advanced approach is presented where no optimization run is required to be performed for robustness evaluations in the inner loop. Instead, a concept of Utopian point is proposed and the corresponding maximum variable/parameter variation will be obtained by just solving a set of linear equations. The obtained robust optimal solution from the new approach may be conservative, but the deviation from the true robust optimal solution is very small given the significant improvement in the computational efficiency. Six numerical and engineering examples are tested to show the applicability and efficiency of the proposed approach, whose solutions and computational time are compared with those from a similar but double-looped approach, SQP-RO, proposed previously.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document