Week 5 – Acceleration Analysis in Planar Mechanisms

This week’s episode focuses on acceleration analysis in planar mechanisms, building on the velocity concepts covered in Week 4. We begin with a review of vector operations, including dot and cross products, and the right-hand rule, emphasizing their role in determining acceleration directions. The episode then explores how to calculate the acceleration of a point in both fixed and moving coordinate systems, highlighting the contributions of different components, such as the Coriolis acceleration. To demonstrate practical application, a worked example of a four-bar linkage is presented, showing step-by-step how to determine the angular accelerations of the links.

The content was created using an AI notebook, with material adapted from five sources, including textbook excerpts, lecture slides, and class examples, to provide a structured and accessible learning resource.