Tension Characteristics of Cable-Driven System Based on ALE Formulation

Abstract This paper mainly studies the tension characteristics of cables in Cable-Driven Parallel Mechanisms (CDPMs). The exact catenary model and cable model based on the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian description (ALE) are used. First, the ALE cable model and the exact catenary model are used to analyze and compare the tension at each point of a single cable, which proves the calculation accuracy of the ALE cable model. Then, the cable model described by ALE is used to model the Cable-Driven Parallel Mechanisms, the end effector is enabled to do a specific helical motion, the tension characteristics of the cable are extracted and analyzed, and the mesh independence of the ALE elements and calculation convergence are verified.