Conceptual design of compliant mechanisms using level set method

Abstract

We propose a level set method-based framework for the conceptual design of compliant mechanisms. In this method, the compliant mechanism design problem is recast as an infinite dimensional optimization problem, where the design variable is the geometric shape of the compliant mechanism and the goal is to find a suitable shape in the admissible design space so that the objective functional can reach a minimum. The geometric shape of the compliant mechanism is represented as the zero level set of a one-higher dimensional level set function, and the dynamic variations of the shape are governed by the Hamilton-Jacobi partial differential equation. The application of level set methods endows the optimization process with the particular quality that topological changes of the boundary, such as merging or splitting, can be handled in a natural fashion. By making a connection between the velocity field in the Hamilton-Jacobi partial differential equation with the shape gradient of the objective functional, we go further to transform the optimization problem into that of finding a steady-state solution of the partial differential equation. Besides the above-mentioned methodological issues, some numerical examples together with prototypes are presented to validate the performance of the method.