Micro-Spring’s Variable Stiffness Design and Characteristics Analysis

Abstract

The variable stiffness micro-springs’ load and deformation have nonlinear relationship, thus they can be used in special occasions. MEMS processing technology can manufacture any complex structures in a plane, using this feature, a variable stiffness design idea for the planar micro-spring is proposed. That is, using one type of structure named contact pairs to achieve stiffness change during the micro-spring’s stretching process. Using contact pairs, two types of variable stiffness springs are designed: stiffness increase spring and stiffness convexity spring. Because of the influence of processing precision, the contact pairs’ sizes of the first type of variable stiffness spring are different each other, the machining error makes the test results and simulation results various. In order to avoid the above problem of above spring, this paper designs another two variable stiffness micro-springs, test results indicate that the improved variable stiffness springs can realize the variable stiffness’ tendency.