Modeling planar slider-crank mechanisms with clearance joints in RecurDyn

Revolute joints in applications always show clearance between pin and bushing due to manufacturing tolerances, the need of relative motion or progressing wear. Many researchers developed and investigated methodologies to calculate the dynamic behavior of mechanisms with such imperfect joints. Very often they use a simple slider-crank mechanism to test or demonstrate the capability of their approaches. In this paper, a methodology for simulating a slider-crank mechanism with an imperfect revolute joint in RecurDyn, a commercial multibody simulation tool, is presented. Therefore, a thorough investigation of existing contact, damping and friction force models as well as different ways of modeling revolute joints in RecurDyn was conducted. For the investigation of the damping models, a special program for calculating the model parameters for a given coefficient of restitution was developed. Only one damping model was capable of reproducing the experimental results, which were found in literature. Some characteristic results of the slider-crank mechanism are presented in a way that they can be compared to results in other papers. Thereby. a good correlation was achieved, demonstrating the capabilities of the methodology.