Colloquia

Summary

Industry uses kinematic couplings to repeatedly align two parts together with high tolerances. Research in the failure of kinematic couplings does not focus on the conjunction of compliance and friction. While aligning the contact points do not all make contact at the same time. If the same order of contact would be used during alignment, this can improve the repeatability. This effect is especially useful for asymmetric couplings, since different contact orders lead to different values of repeatability.

In this thesis a two-dimensional model is introduced to predict the virtual play based on both compliance and friction. This leads to a better understanding of the working principle of kinematic couplings. A second model shows the effect of alignment approaches on the initial positioning. A test set-up is made to validate both models for two-dimensional kinematic couplings.