Authors: Kotov A.V.
This article is an English translation of a original article posted on the blog in Russian. The translation was done using Google Translate, so do not judge strictly. There will certainly be literary errors, but I think the general meaning of the information that I tried to put into this work will be clear to the English-speaking audience. The purpose of this article is to expand the circle of readers of the blog among the English-speaking audience, to tell about the original analytical method of calculating flat lever mechanisms by the method of transforming coordinates in an invariable basis using the theory of complex numbers.
Despite the fact that the foundations of the course «Theory of Mechanisms and Machines» can be said to go back centuries, but if we have to turn to the analytical calculation of lever mechanisms, we will find that no significant shifts in helping to solve these problems have appeared in educational literature so far. It seems that the methods of calculating lever mechanisms have remained at the same level, and science has exhausted itself in this direction and cannot offer anything new, modern and effective.
But what should mechanical engineering do in this case, in which real lever mechanisms have found wide application, and for their rational projection it is necessary to carry out the corresponding calculations? Unfortunately, the well-known principle works here: the drowning man will save himself. Therefore, if science cannot come to the aid of mechanical engineering in terms of developing modern methods for calculating lever mechanisms, then engineers have to solve this problem on their own, by developing their own methods and algorithms.