Sean Thompson and Harry H. Cheng
ABSTRACT
Recently, Cheng (1993) introduced the CH programming language. CH is designed to be a superset of ANSI C with all programming features of FORTRAN. Many programming features in CH are specifically designed and implemented for design automation. Handling dual number as a basic built-in data type in the language is one example. Formulas with dual numbers can be translated into CH programming statements as easily as formulas with real and complex numbers. In this paper we will show that both formulation and programming with dual numbers are remarkably simple for analysis of complicated spatial mechanisms within the programming paradigm of CH. With computational capabilities for dual formulas in mind, formulas for analysis of spatial mechanisms are derived differently from those intended for implementation in computer programming languages without dual data type. We will demonstrate some formulation and programming techniques in the programming paradigm of CH through a displacement analysis of the RCRCR five-link spatial mechanism. A CH program that can obtain both numerical and graphical results for complete displacement analysis of the RCRCR mechanism will be presented.