Joran Booth, Ph.D. in Mech. Eng.

In this project, I built an iterative solver in MATLAB that can take a wide range of geometric and force inputs and solve the kinematic position, velocity, and acceleration of all links at all time steps. The simulation also solves the system forces. Earlier versions assumed a rock being in contact with the jaw at all times whereas later versions assumed the rock only being in contact and therefore exerting a force when the jaw was rocking toward the fixed jaw.

Later iterations of this code incorporated the force analysis with a gear train and linear DC motor analysis to find the instantaneous power at all time steps in a cycle. The plots shown above only show some of the output data to keep things simpler.