Elastodynamic modeling and structural error compensation for a 5-DOF parallel mechanism with subclosed loops

In order to reduce the adverse effects of structural errors on a novel 5-degrees of freedom (DOF) parallel kinematic mechanism (PKM) with subclosed loops, studies on the elastodynamic modeling and structural error compensation are conducted in this paper. First, considering that introduction of subclosed loops significantly increased the complexity and difficulty of elastodynamic modeling, an equivalent unit modeling method for the branch chain with subclosed loop is proposed based on force analysis and deformation compatibility condition. Then, elastodynamic model of the whole 5-DOF PKM is established with the matrix structural analysis based method. Second, by defining a six-dimensional error (three translational errors and three rotational errors) for each node, structural error model of the PKM is constructed based on closed-loop vector method. To consider the coupling effects of static and dynamic structural errors, the dynamic structural errors derived by above elastodynamic model would be substituted into the structural error model along with given static structural errors. Finally, structural error compensation optimization model is established and structural errors are compensated by adjusting the driven parameters based on the improved particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Numerical simulations are conducted to verify the proposed elastodynamic modeling and structural error compensation methods. After compensation, the position errors along x, y, and z directions are respectively decreased by 68.036%, 81.409%, and 90.625%, and the angle errors around x and y directions are respectively decreased by 91.426% and 62.042%.