Carbon footprint prediction method for linkage mechanism design

The emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, accelerates global warming and poses a crisis to the environment and human society. The carbon emission of products is mainly determined by the design stage of the life cycle. However, the data in the scheme design stage has certain fuzziness and uncertainty. Therefore, it is difficult to calculate the carbon footprint directly. In this paper, a carbon footprint prediction model of linkage mechanism scheme design stage (CFPL-SDS) is proposed to help designers make decisions. Firstly, the CFPL-SDS is built to quantify the carbon performance of linkage mechanism. Secondly, according to the structural characteristics of the closed-loop cascade rehabilitation robot, a four-finger training mechanism is designed. Finally, the model is applied to the four-finger training mechanism to verify its feasibility. The results show that the CFPL-SDS can calculate the carbon footprint of the linkage in the design stage. Moreover, the CFPL-SDS establishes the mathematical model foundation for the low-carbon optimization problem of linkage mechanism.