Tension analysis of cable-driven parallel mechanisms

A cable-driven parallel mechanism (CDPM) possesses a number of promising advantages over the conventional rigid-link mechanisms, such as simple and light-weight mechanical structure, high-loading capacity, and large workspace. However, the formulations and results obtained for the rigid-link mechanisms cannot be directly applied to CDPMs due to the unilateral property of cables. For a CDPM, cable tensions appear to be the most important part in analyzing kinetostatic issues such as stability, workspace, stiffness, etc. This paper mainly focuses on the tension analysis issue. The equilibrium constraints such as force-closure condition, feasible wrench condition and wrench set condition are addressed. Generic analysis approaches based on dimension reduction techniques, which are successfully implemented through computationally effective recursive algorithms, are proposed.