Abstract
Abstract. This paper presents a geometric synthesis method for compliant mechanisms based on similarity transformation of pole maps. Motion generation is a typical and common mechanism synthesis task, so this study takes it as the design requirement to expound the proposed method. Most of the current research work relies on numerical solution of the nonlinear Bernoulli–Euler beam model, numerical simulations or physical experiments to study the synthesis method of compliant mechanisms. There is a lack of simpler and more efficient methods to achieve motion generation of compliant mechanisms with various topologies. This study is based on pole map which is a geometric tool to describe the motion of rigid-body mechanisms. In this paper, we first demonstrate the feasibility of applying the similarity transformation of pole map to compliant mechanisms. It is proved that the pole map of compliant mechanisms has the same characteristic as rigid-body mechanisms during similarity transformation. Then we present the procedure of synthesis method in detail and expound the establishment method of function module which can avoid the functional defects of the final designed mechanism. At last, we take the compliant geared linkages and compliant four-bar linkage as examples to illustrate the novel synthesis approach. The result is an applicable and effective synthesis method for motion generation of compliant mechanisms.
Highlights
The compliant mechanism can be defined as a mechanism that obtains some of its motion by means of the deformation of elastic elements (Howell, 2001)
The geometric similarity of deformation curves, which are formed by flexural beams with different lengths, is discussed, and it is proved that the pole map of compliant mechanisms has the same characteristic as rigidbody mechanisms during similarity transformation
Based on similarity transformation of pole maps, Lin et al (2018) proposed a new approach to rigid-body mechanism synthesis and used geometric way to find the approximate solution of multi-position motion generation
Summary
The compliant mechanism can be defined as a mechanism that obtains some of its motion by means of the deformation of elastic elements (Howell, 2001). Researchers have developed many methods for analyzing the large deflection of flexural beams, such as elliptical integral method, beam constraint model, Adomian decomposition method, pseudo-rigid-body model (PRBM), and non-linear finite element analysis method (FEA). Based on these studies, researchers can design compliant mechanisms. Midha et al (1994) introduced the kinematics-based design method. Howell and Midha (1994) created the synthesis approach based on PRBM, and it can provide a practical means for analyzing and designing the compliant mechanism. In the field of compliant linkage synthesis, Bagivalu Prasanna et al (2020) introduced a methodology to determine the possible deflected configuration of a compliant four-bar mechanism for a given set of load or displacement boundary conditions. Valentini and Pennestri (2018) presented an original methodology for addressing the kinematic synthesis of a compliant four-bar mechanism by using PRBM. Alqasimi et al (2016) designed a linear bistable compliant crank–slider mechanism by using PRBM to solve the kinetic and kinematic equations. Hanke et al (2015) presented a graphical synthesis algorithm and used this method to solve two-position synthesis of planar com-
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