The mechanics of mechanical watches and clocks. (Q429061)

After an interesting and well-illustrated introduction into the history and current understanding of the mechanics of watches and clocks, the authors review the Swiss lever escapement, the most widely used escapement mechanism. A dynamic impulsive piecewise-linear differential equation model is presented, and a commercial software system \texttt{RecurDy} is used to calculate the displacement, velocity, and acceleration of the escapement. The difference of about 10\% between simulation and experimental results stems from the modeling of the hairspring, the subject of the next chapter, which deals with the motion of the spiral spring assembly. Again, a model is developed and the results from the computer-generated solution are compared with experimental data. For a more precise description, it is necessary to consider fourth-order differential equations to describe the hanging balance of the wave assembly. After the discussion of automatic winding devices (history, models, and computer simulation), the authors give some general comments concerning energy harvesting based on the automatic winding devices to power other mobile devices. The last chapter treats gear and power transmission models, together with the analysis of transmission and torque errors and their correction possibilities. Many of the results reported here were obtained by academicians in China, first published as PhD or Master theses, or various local research papers. The publication of this monograph in the Springer series ``History of Mechanism and Machine Science'' makes the interesting topic of design and manufacturing of mechanical watches and clocks easier accessible to the western research community. Computer automations for various escape mechanisms and winding devices can be downloaded from the website \url{http://www.extra.springer.com/}.