Minimum Sensitivity Design of Planar Kinematic Systems
Abstract In designing a kinematic system, it is desirable to ensure that the performance of the system is relatively insensitive to small changes in the nominal design, since this will result in a more robust system that can be manufactured economically with looser tolerances. A general method for minimizing the sensitivity of such systems is developed in this paper. The approach is based on the idea of converting the minimum sensitivity design problem into a nonlinear programming problem which is then solved using an exterior penalty function method. The constrained multi-element formulation is used for kinematic analysis and sensitivity analysis is performed using a direct differentation technique. The resulting algorithm is general enough to handle any planar kinematic system. The proposed method has been implemented in a computer program which has been tested on some sample problems. The results provide convincing proof of the power and feasibility of this method.