AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

MENG 372: Mechanical Systems

Mid Term Exam 1, 24 October 2011
Name: ID:

1. (10) True or false?

(a) A Geneva wheel is an example of a double-dwell mechanism.
(b) The time ratio of the slider-crank mechanism (Problem 4) is 1:.
(c) A toggle mechanism needs oil to be unlocked.
(d) A linkage containing pin-jointed links will always have positive degrees of freedom.
(e) Coupler curves may have straight line segments.

2. The photograph shows a foldable beach umbrella.

(a) (10) Draw a schematic diagram illustrating clearly
the links and joints.
(b) (10) By intuition, how many degrees of freedom
(DOF) are there?
(c) (10) Use Gruebler’s equation to calculate the
DOF. Comment on your answer.

3. (30) In a manufacturing facility it is required to move a box between the two positions shown. Design a
mechanism to do this task. Do the synthesis on this sheet and describe your steps.
4. (30) The figure shows a slider-crank mechanism. Given: a, b and .
 Write down the vector loop equation(s) necessary to determine the slider position c.
 Transform your vector equations into algebraic equations.
 Write your algebraic equations in a form that can readily be solved by MATLAB.

a b a

c