A Multibody Loop Constraints Approach for Modelling Cam/Follower Devices

This paper proposes a formulation for modelling mechanisms witha cam/follower type of contact using a multibody approach in relativecoordinates. The proposed approach is inspired from the wheel/railcontact model developed by Fisette and Samin but, in the present case,possible intermittent contact between the cam and the follower isconsidered, for generality purposes.Loop kinematicconstraints are introduced to satisfy tangent and punctual contact aslong as the bodies lean against each other. The effective presence (ornot) of the contact is governed by the sign of the normal constraintforce which can be computed thanks to the Lagrange multiplierstechnique.The above-mentioned option to kinematicallyconstraint the bodies in their contact phase unavoidably leads to ashift from one model to another when a contact disappears (or,conversely, reappears). Indeed, this increases (or decreases) the numberof degrees of freedom of the current system. The control of the variablepartitioning is thus absolutely necessary and is all the more complex sothat practical applications can contain several pairs of bodies inintermittent contact.Illustrative examples are proposed: acomparison with another multibody formalism, an experimental validationand the modelling of universal wheels of mobile robots which representsa quite original application of the proposed formulation.