No abstract

This paper deals with the design of singularity-free cable-driven parallel mechanism. Due to the negative effect on the performance, singularities should be avoided in the design. The singular configurations of mechanisms can be numerically determined by calculating the rank of its Jacobian matrix. However, this method is inefficient and non-intuitive. In this paper, we investigate the singularities of planar and spatial cable-driven parallel mechanisms using Grassmann line geometry. Considering cables as line vectors in projective space, the singularity conditions are identified with clear geometric meaning which results in useful method for singularity analysis of the cable-driven parallel mechanisms. The method is applied to 3-DOF planar and 6-DOF spatial cable-driven mechanisms to determine their singular configurations. The results show that the singularities of both mechanisms can be eliminated by changing the dimensions of the mechanisms or adding extra cables.

Houdingxiang No. 3 Bridge is a 4-span steel box girder bridge. After the incremental launching construction, the bridge has to be lowering to the support bear, the lowering construction is divided into three stages. At first the launching equipment is used to lower 80cm, the next the jack with load capacity of 180 tons is used to lower 110cm, finally three-direction-jack with load capacity of 200 tons is used to lower 20cm. mechanical analysis on lowering the bridge used jacks with the load capacity of 180 tons and 200 tons is respectively carried out by FEM software ABAQUS, and the result shows that this kind of lowering technique is safe and reliable, it meets the construction demand.

Joints that represent locations of discontinuity were the prominent factors affecting the overall behavior of precast segmental bridges. In this study, the steel shear key was designed, which was used to transmit the shear stress of the joints. To study the mechanical characteristics of the steel shear keyed joints in the construction and finished states, direct shear experiments and numerical analysis were carried out. The experimental results showed that the steel shear keyed joints had a high bearing capacity and good ductility. Under the action of confining stress, the joints relied on the mechanical occlusion between the steel keys to transmit the shear forces. When the load-displacement curve entered the horizontal stage, it can still bore large relative deformation, and the bearing capacity did not decrease. In the construction state, the inelastic deformation of the steel shear key should be used to control the design value of the temporary load. In the finished state, the bearing capacity of joints should be controlled by the direct shear strength of the steel shear key, which can be calculated according to the shear formula. The shear strength of the material and size of the steel shear key are the main factors affecting the bearing capacity of steel shear keyed joints.

The maximum wrench capabilities of the cable-driven parallel mechanisms are investigated in this paper. Focusing on accuracy and efficiency, two methods, an optimization-based method and a hybrid method based on optimization and geometry, are presented for determining the wrench capability of the cable-driven parallel mechanisms. Both methods are applied to a 6-DOF cable-driven parallel mechanism with eight cables to compute the maximum isotropic force and maximum isotropic moment. Comparison of the two methods is made. The results show that the hybrid method proposed is more accurate and computationally efficient.