Metamorphic mechanisms are members of the class of mechanisms that are ableto change their configurations sequentially to meet different requirements. Thepaper introduces a comprehensive symbolic matrix representation forcharacterizing the topology of one of these mechanisms in a singleconfiguration using general information concerning links and joints.Furthermore, a matrix representation of an original metamorphic mechanismthat has the ability to evolve is proposed by uniting the matricesrepresenting all of the mechanism's possible configurations. Therepresentation of metamorphic kinematic joints is developed in accordancewith the variation laws of these mechanisms. By introducing the jointvariation matrices derived from generalized operations on the relatedsymbolic adjacency matrices, evolutionary relationships between mechanismsin adjacent configurations and the original metmaorphic mechanism are madedistinctly. Examples are provided to demonstrate the validation of the method.
展开▼
