Mass Center of Planar Mechanisms Using Auxiliary Parallelograms

Abstract

Center of mass is an important property of a mechanism. In biomechanics, in many studies, one monitors the motion of this point. The center of mass has importance in development of gravity compensated exercise machines and test beds on earth that mimic the behavior of systems in space. In this paper, a method is described where auxiliary parallelograms are added to a planar mechanism to identify the location of the center of mass of the original mechanism. In this procedure, the original and the augmented mechanisms have the same number of degrees-of-freedom. During motion, the center of mass is a physical point which can be monitored or used for purposes motivated from the application.