The analysis of mechanisms is not something that comes easily to most mechanical engineers, even to design engineers. The concepts are abstract and often contradictory, the physics is hard to comprehend, and the mathematics for all but the simplest mechanisms is beyond manual calculations.

Ripe picking grounds for software, right?

Wrong, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the widely used approach of requiring that the student be thorough with all the fundamentals first.

This book takes a different approach. Built around Altair’s MotionVew and MotionSolve, both of which are available to any engineer who has access to HyperMesh, it focuses on design requirements and how they can be modeled using software.

To make the most of this book you should be an engineering student, in your third or final year of Mechanical Engineering. You should have access to licenses of HyperWorks, to the Altair website, and to an instructor who can guide you through your chosen projects or assignments.

The book can also be useful to working engineers faced with designing assemblies that allow relative motion between components. The solved examples presented as videos with voice-over narration can be downloaded – for free. The book is available both online and from Altair India. The PDF version is free: for printed versions, contact Altair India to check the price.

Areas covered include

• the divide-and-rule approach to modeling mechanisms
• applicability in areas such as machine tools, packaging equipment and robotics
• the use of lumped-models for simplicity, and in areas where theoretical mechanics is sparse
• an introduction to the terminology of MBD – static analysis, kinematic analysis, dynamic analysis, etc.
• usage of links, constraints, motion, forces, sensors and the computation of degrees-of-freedom
• an overview of analysis vs. synthesis in the design of mechanisms
• the mathematics of numerical integration
• an introduction to modeling mixed mechanical and electrical systems, including transfer functions and controllers
• techniques in solution-control
• methods in verification, validation and optimization
• an overview of MotionView, including the Model Definition Language (MDL)
• analysis of flexible bodies using FEA with MBD