Designing Dynamically Compensated and Robust Cam Profiles With Bernstein-Bézier Harmonic Curves

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of designing dynamically compensated cam profiles to minimize residual vibrations in high-speed cam-follower systems. The traditional Polydyne method is modified and extended to achieve significant improvement in residual vibration characteristics. First, cam displacement curves are represented by Bernstein-Bézier harmonic curves as opposed to polynomial curves. These recently developed harmonic curves are low in harmonic content and therefore the resulting cam profiles are less prone to induce resonant vibrations in the follower system. Second, the design procedure is expanded such that the residual vibrations of the resulting cam-follower system is not only extinguished at the design speed but also made insensitive to speed variations. Numerical examples are given in the end.