Clearance vs. tolerance for mobile overconstrained mechanisms

Abstract This paper describes a geometrical model to quantify minimal joint clearance in overconstrained 2D or 3D linkages when the shapes of components are subject to manufacturing deviations. This important property needs to be computed at the earlier stages of product development for engineers to design and produce reliable mechanisms in the context of mass production. The solution is based on a previous study dedicated to rigid assemblies. The major contributions of this work are the definition of a regularized closure function together with the computation of minimum joint clearance for a mobile linkage. Five examples illustrate the efficiency of the solution.