Controlling the configuration space topology of mechanisms
Soft Condensed Matter
2022-11-23 v1
Abstract
Linkages are mechanical devices constructed from rigid bars and freely rotating joints studied both for their utility in engineering and as mathematical idealizations in a number of physical systems. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in designing linkages to perform certain tasks from the physics community. We describe a method to design the topology of the configuration space of a linkage by first identifying the manifold of critical points, then perturbing around such critical configurations. We then demonstrate our procedure by designing a mechanism to gate the propagation of a soliton in a Kane-Lubensky chain of interconnected rotors.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2205.10180,
title = {Controlling the configuration space topology of mechanisms},
author = {M. Berry and David Limberg and M. E. Lee-Trimble and Ryan Hayward and C. D. Santangelo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.10180},
year = {2022}
}