On the infinitely-stable rotational mechanism using the off-axis rotation of a bistable translational mechanism

Abstract

Abstract. Different from the prior art concentrating on the primary translation of bistable translational mechanisms this paper investigates the off-axis rotation behaviour of a bistable translational mechanism through displacing the guided primary translation at different positions. Moment-rotation curves obtained using the nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) for a case study show the multiple stable positions of the rotation under each specific primary motion, suggesting that an infinitely-stable rotational mechanism can be achieved by controlling the primary motion. In addition, several critical transition points have been identified and qualitative testing has been conducted for the case study.

Modelling of the buckling of a diaphragm–spine structure for a wave energy converter

“…A variety of numerical methods are used to solve for loads and deformed configurations such as shooting methods based on boundary value problems [16,17], incremental displacement methods [14] or non-linear or large deformation FEA [13,18,19,20,21]. Hao and Mullins [21] note that displacement control is necessary in the set-up of the FEA model since the force is no longer a suitable control parameter in the negative stiffness range, which occurs between the critical buckling load and the location of maximum snap through force magnitude.…”