Introduction to Compliant Mechanisms

A normalization-based approach to the mobility analysis of spatial compliant multi-beam modules

“…(1). All the non-dimensional numbers, a=12, c=−6, d=16/(D/L) 2 for round beams or d=12/(T/L) 2 for square beams, b=4, and δ=2G/E=1/(1+v) (v is the Poisson ratio of material), are characteristics of the uniform symmetrical beam.…”

“…C.1). , it can be observed that if L 2 is significantly smaller than L 1 , compared with the more compliant Beams 1 and 3, Beam 2 from a 5-DOF compliant mechanism excluding the axial displacement degenerates to a) a 3-DOF spherical joint due to the fact that all the stiffness entries associated with the two transverse displacements (elements (2,2), (2,6), (3,3), and (3,5)) are very large resulting from the existence of high-order terms of L 1 /L 2 , or b) even a DOC if all the stiffness entries associated with the three rotational angles are also very large under the conditions that the first-order terms of L 1 /L 2 (elements (4,4), (5,5) and (6,6) Using the stiffness method in Section 3.1.1 to obtain the normalized compliance matrix for the spatial TBM with length error, and substituting the same known conditions for Eq. (9) From the highlighted diagonal compliance entries [elements (2, 2), (3,3) and (4, 4)] in Eq.…”

“…Compliant mechanisms [1,2], transmitting motion/loads by the deformation of compliant members, have many potential merits such as zero backlashes, no need for lubrication, reduced friction and wear, and high precision compared with traditional rigid-body mechanisms [3,4]. They can be used in a variety of applications, especially where high-precision motions are required, such as precision motion positioning stages, precision robotics in biomedical applications, MEMS sensors and actuators, amplifiers, grippers, adaptive mechanisms, and design-for-no-assembly [5][6][7][8][9][10].…”

Design of 3-legged XYZ compliant parallel manipulators with minimised parasitic rotations

“…CPMs benefit from eliminated backlash and friction, no need for lubrication, reduced wear and noise, monolithic configuration, etc [1]. There are increasing needs for high-precision (up to nano-positioning) manipulators such as XYZ CPMs.…”

“…For example, a commonly-used parallelogram flexure mechanism produces a transverse primary motion caused by the force acting at the tip of the flexure mechanism with the consequence that active rotation compensation is needed to maintain a zero rotation at the tip. This issue on the negative parasitic rotation is one of the shortcomings of the well-known compact serial XYZ flexure 1 There are two classes of decoupling: one is the kinematic decoupling, and the other is the kinematostatic decoupling. Kinematic decoupling can be further classified into two types: complete decoupling and partial decoupling.…”