Problems of locus solved by mechanisms theory (Q2247180)

In this book the authors combine two very interesting topics: geometrically defined curves as locus of points and trajectories of points in planar mechanism science. The book starts with an introductory chapter defining the notions of loci and introducing some basics of mechanism theory. Then 13 chapters follow with different geometric definitions of loci in an ascending difficulty. These chapters are organized in similar ways. In the first step a locus of a point, bound by geometric conditions is given. Then the corresponding mechanism is shown in one fixed position and with several discrete positions of the mechanism in one figure. These are getting more and more unclear with the increasing difficulty in the book (cf. Figs. 8.13, 12.34, 13.92, 13.146). Also, the generated trajectory of a fixed point on the mechanism is shown. These pictures are sometimes of low resolution (cf. Figs. 1.10, 3.6, 12.3, 13.13) and on varying quality. Partly in the steps before it would have been beneficial for the reader to put more emphasis on geometric remarks to the locus or trajectories and the generating mechanisms, which are mostly just shown without any remark. On most occasions also variants of the mechanism are presented, usually by adding one additional degree of freedom. Pictures of generated trajectories for different values of the added parameter are shown. These variations yield related curves to the given one which get sometimes simpler, in most cases their shapes look much more complicated. The last chapter gives a glimpse to the topic of path generating synthesis of planar four-bar mechanisms.