Abstract
In this paper, a novel design concept and manufacturing method for the compliant bistable structure is proposed. The pulsed laser technique is utilized as the manufacturing method for both the fabrication and the introduction of desired pre-stresses, simultaneously. Based on this concept, a novel bistable structure consisted of one pre-compressed main beam, and a pair of supporting beams is designed and fabricated. The deformation difference between the main beam and the supporting beams induced by laser heating residual stress make the main beam to buckle under the constraints of two supporting beams and possess a bistable feature. The bistable structures can be implemented into other devices in the form of cantilevers thanks to the internal integration of the buckled beam and the boundary conditions. The characteristics of this new bistable structure, including its stable shape and snap-through response, are investigated both experimentally and numerically. During the snap forth and back process with the snapping load of 19 mN and the required energy of 77 mN·mm, an impressive energy dissipation with a loss factor value of 0.3 exists. Finally, a parametric study was carried out to find the critical performance parameters.
Highlights
As one typical type of compliant structure, bistable curved beams have many energy-related and motion-related applications from macro-word to the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), such as energy harvesters, sensors, and actuators, due to their attractive mechanical behaviors: negative stiffness and two equilibrium stable positions [1].D
Stable shapes and snap-through behavior. Though this new bistable structure had been fabricated successfully by experiments, the deformation difference between the main beam and supporting beams caused by laser heat is uncertain
In finite element analysis (FEA), the deformation difference is caused by the temperature gradient applying to the supporting beams
Summary
As one typical type of compliant structure, bistable curved beams have many energy-related and motion-related applications from macro-word to the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), such as energy harvesters, sensors, and actuators, due to their attractive mechanical behaviors: negative stiffness and two equilibrium stable positions [1].D. As one typical type of compliant structure, bistable curved beams have many energy-related and motion-related applications from macro-word to the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), such as energy harvesters, sensors, and actuators, due to their attractive mechanical behaviors: negative stiffness and two equilibrium stable positions [1]. The pre-shaped bistable beam is often employed as the unit cell of the metamaterials or metastructure. Tan et al [7] proposed a type of metamaterial with a cylindrical shape which is composed of bistable curved beams. The pre-shaped bistable beams have a simple structure form and can be efficiently fabricated by the etching technique for MEMS [3], and it is easy for the metamaterials to manufacture by the 3D-printed technique. The force-displacement response of the pre-shaped bistable beam is asymmetric, which limits its applications, such as energy harvester
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