Clearance influence analysis on mechanisms

This paper deals with the effects that clearance in the kinematic pairs has on the mechanism configuration. The problem has already been addressed by a number of authors, who have analyzed clearance effects from different perspectives. In this paper, the focus is on a kinematic modelling, assessing the actual configuration of a mechanism with clearance-affected pairs. After the most relevant existing results are briefly reviewed, a new original method to assess clearance influence is presented. The new method is shown to be more flexible and complete than the previous ones: more flexible because it allows the use of a generic model for the kinematic pairs; more complete because it can be used for any mechanism having an arbitrary numbers of links loaded by any set of forces/torques. As a consequence, the method is suitable for evaluating clearance influence in both static and dynamic conditions, when inertial forces/torques acting on each link have to be considered.