Structural Analyses of Ancient Chinese Crossbows

Crossbow is a reconfigurable mechanism which was a typical weapon in ancient China. There are three types of ancient Chinese crossbows including the original crossbow, Chu State repeating crossbow and Zhuge Repeating crossbow. The aim of this work is to analyze mechanism structures of ancient Chinese crossbows. The historical development of ancient Chinese crossbows is briefly introduced first. Then, according to the concept of variable chains and the representation of special joints, the topological variability of ancient Chinese crossbows during shooting process is analyzed and presented.