The design of multi-material compliant mechanisms by means of a multi Sequential Element Rejection and Admission (SERA) method is presented in this work. The SERA procedure was successfully applied to the design of single-material compliant mechanisms. The main feature is that the method allows material to flow between different material models. Separate criteria for the rejection and admission of elements allow material to redistribute between the pre-defined material models and efficiently achieve the optimum design. These features differentiate it to other bi-directional discrete methods, making the SERA method very suitable for the design of multimaterial compliant mechanisms. Numerous examples are presented to show the validity of the multi SERA procedure to design multi-material compliant mechanisms.
A generalized formulation to design Multi-Input-Multi-Output (MIMO) compliant mechanisms is presented in this work. This formulation also covers the simplified cases of the design of Multi-Input and Multi-Output compliant mechanisms, more commonly used in the literature. A Sequential Element Rejection and Admission (SERA) method is used to obtain the optimum design that converts one or more input works into one or more output displacements in predefined directions. The SERA procedure allows material to flow between two different material models: 'real' and 'virtual'. The method works with two separate criteria for the rejection and admission of elements to efficiently achieve the optimum design. Examples of Multi-Input, 2 Multi-Output and MIMO compliant mechanisms are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed procedure to design complex complaint mechanisms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.