Kinematics Simulation of a Twin Tripod Sliding Universal Joint

This paper presents the kinematics of a twin tripod sliding universal joint consisting of two tripod joints connected by an intermediate shaft. By means of a multi-body dynamics technique, it has been investigated the intrinsic properties including the angle variation of input, output and intermediate shaft, the angular speed of the output shaft and the trajectory of tripod center, etc. These results provide practical guidelines for promoting the utilization and popularization of the twin tripod sliding universal joint.