A REPRESENTATION LANGUAGE FOR MECHANICAL-BEHAVIOR

Mechanism design automation support requires developing a representati on language for describing mechanism behavior. The language is necessa ry to specify design requirements, to describe existing mechanisms, an d to catalog them for design reuse. This paper presents a simple and e xpressive language for describing the behavior of fixed-axes mechanism s. The language symbolically captures the important aspects of the kin ematics and simple dynamics. It uses predicates and algebraic relation s to describe the configurations and motions of each part of the mecha nism and the relationships between them. It allows both accurate and c omplete descriptions and partial, abstract, and underspecified descrip tions. We show that the language is computationally viable by describi ng how to automatically derive behavioral descriptions stated in the l anguage from the mechanism structure. To test its usefulness, we descr ibe a design validation program that determines if a given mechanism s tructure can produce desired behaviors stated in the language.