Free-form Kinetic Reciprocal System

Mario SASSONE Assistant Professor, PhD Politecnico di Torino Torino, Italy mario.sassone@polito.it

Mario Sassone, born 1965, received his master degree at Politecnico di Torino in 1994. He is currently Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Torino in the Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering

Kinetic Reciprocal System (KRS) are innovative moveable structures based on the principle of reciprocity [1] with internal pin-slot constraints [2]. The analysis of KRS kinematic and static determinacy is developed through the construction of kinematic matrices, accordingly with [3] and a discussion of results is presented. A description of KRS in terms of relations between displacements of bodies is formulated and a computational procedure for the generation of pin-slot paths is developed, in order to build free-form KRS. The procedure allows to design a KRS starting from the definition of the required kinetic behaviour and its validity has been tested on physical models. A set of case studies and possible applications are described, focusing on the morphologic variety of results and on the efficiency of the kinetic performance.