International Journal of Engineering and Technology

Dimensional variations due to the geometric tolerance and joint clearance lead to tolerance stack-up. The multi-body dynamic analysis (MBD) of stack-up mechanism is contact driven. Making and breaking contact is a discontinuous event. It causes high impact force with discontinuous acceleration. There are two approaches for the estimation of normal force by virtue of contact. The impact function approach holds good when the actual penetration of colliding bodies is known. The restitution approach is used when exact impact values are not available. Both the models work on the penalty regularization method. The penalty regularization parameter is calculated from the material contact stiffness and the depth of penetration of the colliding bodies. A new technique is developed to estimate the penalty parameter for the clearance in the revolute joint. A methodology is described to estimate the penalty parameter, which is based on material stiffness and speed of the input link. A relation is established for the estimation of the penalty parameter. The estimated penalty parameter is the function of input speed; consequently it can be estimated for various input speeds with a single equation. Iterations of the kinematic and dynamic simulation are not required. Simulation time is also reduced by means of exact penalty regularization parameter. A case study of crank and rocker mechanism with the clearance revolute joint was simulated for the range of speed for the validation.