Qiong "John" Shen

This updated edition of Mechanism Design: Visual and Programmable Approaches using MATLAB® and Simscape Multibody offers a comprehensive introduction to kinematic synthesis, covering motion, path, and function generation techniques for a wide range of planar and spatial single- and multi-loop linkage systems.The book presents foundational concepts alongside practical methodologies, making it an accessible resource for both students and practitioners in the field. In this revised edition, real-world application of the presented methods is supported through the integration of MATLAB® and its powerful simulation and visualization toolbox, Simscape Multibody™. These tools help bridge theory and practice, allowing readers to implement kinematic synthesis techniques and observe system behavior through dynamic visualizations. New content expands the book’s scope, including topics such as geared five-bar kinematic synthesis and both forward and inverse kinematics for robotic systems.Designed as a complete introduction to kinematic synthesis, this textbook is an essential resource for students in mechanical engineering and related disciplines seeking to master the principles and practicalities of mechanism design.The new edition also includes a solution manual and MATLAB as an online resource for instructors to support the topics discussed in the book.

In the field of mechanism design, kinematic synthesis is a creative means to produce mechanism solutions. Combined with the emergence of powerful personal computers, mathematical analysis software and the development of quantitative methods for kinematic synthesis, there is an endless variety of possible mechanism solutions that users are free to explore, realize, and evaluate for any given problem in an efficient and practical manner. Mechanism Design: Visual and Programmable Approaches provides a broad introduction to kinematic synthesis, presenting and applying motion, path, and function generation methodologies for some of the most basic planar and spatial single and multi-loop linkage systems. This work provides numerous in-chapter synthesis examples and end-of-chapter synthesis problems. Users can also invent their own specialized synthesis problems according to their particular interests.The commercial mathematical software package MATLAB® and its mechanical system modeling and simulation module SimMechanics® are thoroughly integrated in this textbook for mechanism synthesis and analysis. The reader is therefore enabled to readily apply the design approaches presented in this textbook to synthesize mechanism systems and visualize their results. With this knowledge of both kinematic synthesis theory and computer-based application, readers will be well-equipped to invent novel mechanical system designs for a wide range of applications.