Harry H. Cheng and Sean Thompson
ABSTRACT
Recently, Cheng (1993) introduced the CH programming language. CH is designed to be a superset of C with all programming features of FORTRAN. 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 under the CH programming paradigm. 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 CH programming paradigm through 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.