Watt Linkage Animation

Solve the equations of motion for, and animate an arbitrary 3 bar Watt Linkage.

Description

[t,z,r_PO] = wattLinkage(n,npathpoints,lengths,omega) integrates the equations of motion for a 3 bar Watt linkage and animates the motion of the system over n cycles (one cycle is defined as a full sweep top to bottom).

npathpoints determines the number of trajectory points to plot (Inf by default, for all).
lengths is an optional 3 element array of linkage lengths ([3,1,3] by default).

omega is the angular rate in radians per second (0.5 by default).

The returned values are the integrator outputs (t and z) and the position of the center of the intermediate bar.

% Example
% % animate system over 10 cycles
% wattLinkage(10);
% %animate asymmetric linkage
% [t,z,r_PO] = wattLinkage(5,[],[5 1 2]);

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.7 (R2008b)