Paper detail

Generalized forms of an overconstrained sliding mechanism consisting of two congruent tetrahedra

We investigate the motions of a bar structure consisting of two congruent tetrahedra, whose edges in their basic position form the face diagonals of a rectangular parallelepiped. The constraint of the motion is that the originally intersecting edges should remain coplanar. We determine all finite motions of our bar structure. This generalizes our earlier work, where we did the same for the case when the rectangular parallelepiped was a cube. At the end of the paper we point out three further possibilities to generalize the question about the cube, and give for them examples of finite motions.