Dynamics and Wear Prediction of Mechanisms Considering Multiple Clearances and Coatings

Abstract

The increase in joint clearance and system vibration caused by joint wear are important factors that may lead to the failure of the mechanism and a decrease in the motion accuracy of the actuator. In this paper, to investigate the impact of different numbers of spherical joint clearances on the dynamics performance of the mechanism and explore effective measures to reduce the vibration of the mechanism caused by multiple joint clearances, on the basis of the previous research on the mechanism dynamics when there is clearance in a single spherical joint, an improved contact force model is used to study the effects of coating, no coating, and different clearance quantities on the dynamics of a mechanism containing multiple spherical joint clearances. Moreover, the joint reaction forces and contact-impact forces under different working conditions are calculated. In order to reduce the difficulty of calculating the joint wear, an approximate calculation method for contact area is proposed, and an improved Archard wear model is employed to calculate and analyze the changes in wear amount under the influence of both spherical joint clearance and coating.