Reliability analysis of over-center locking of spatial four-bar mechanism

The operating principle of over-center locking on spatial mechanism is analyzed and a reliability analytical model of over-center locking on spatial mechanism is proposed. Besides, the genetic algorithm and Newton method are combined to solve the nonlinear equation system about the over-center locking angle, and then the dimensions of the spatial mechanism are treated as the input parameters of the well-trained neural network. The over-center locking angle is obtained by utilizing the neural network's nonlinear mapping function to calculate the dispersion. The results show that in a spatial four-bar mechanism, the dimensions of driving link, coupler link and their corresponding variation coefficients have prominent influence on the reliability of over-center locking. The proposed model and methods not only could provide helpful reference in designing over-center locking of special four-bar mechanism, but also improve the computational efficiency noticeably.