Dynamic analyses of four-bar mechanism in MechAnalyzer software

Kinematic and dynamic analyses of mechanisms or machines form a major part in Theory of Machines course. The kinematic analysis involves study of motion of links or parts and is more intuitive to understand. On the other hand, the results of dynamic analysis which deals with forces and moments, are in the form of graph plots and require better understanding of underlying mathematics to comprehend the results. For the effective teaching of kinematics of mechanisms, the authors have developed MechAnalyzer software which has a set of common planar mechanisms that can be selected and analyzed almost instantly. In this paper, the formulation and the implementation of dynamic analysis of four-bar mechanism is presented. A recursive formulation named DeNOC (Decoupled Natural Orthogonal Complement) has been used to perform the inverse and forward dynamics, the results of which have been validated with a commercial software package.