Coupler-curve synthesis via multi-objective optimisation using NSGA-II

This paper presents a study of a classical mechanism synthesis problem in the framework of multi-objective optimisation. In addition to the primary kinematic objective of reducing the structural error, staying away from the singular configurations is considered as a secondary objective. Two wellstudied coupler-curve synthesis problems reported in existing literature are revisited for the purpose of application of the proposed formulations, and the results are obtained using the genetic algorithm-based optimiser, NSGA-II. Detailed analysis of the results show that the Pareto-optimal fronts obtained dominate the existing ones in terms of the secondary objective, while being comparable in the primary one.