12/7/2015 Lin Cao, Allan T. Dolovich, Arend L. Schwab, Just L. Herder and Wenjun (Chris) ZhangJ. Mech. Des 137(12), 122301; doi: 10.1115/1.4031294
Rigid-body mechanisms (RBMs) and compliant mechanisms (CMs) are traditionally treated in significantly different ways. In this paper, we present an approach to the synthesis of both RBMs and CMs. In this approach, RBMs and CMs are generalized into mechanisms that consist of five basic modules, including Compliant Link (CL), Rigid Link (RL), Pin Joint (PJ), Compliant Joint (CJ), and Rigid Joint (RJ). The link modules and joint modules are modeled with beam and hinge elements, respectively, in a geometrically nonlinear finite element solver, and subsequently a discrete beam-hinge ground structure model is established. Based on this discrete beam-hinge model, a procedure that follows topology optimization is developed, called module optimization. Particularly, in the module optimization approach, the states (both presence or absence and sizes) of joints and links are all design variables, and one may obtain a RBM, a partially CM, or a fully CM for a given mechanical task. The proposed approach has thus successfully addressed the challenge in the type and dimensional synthesis of RBMs and CMs. Three design examples of the path generator are discussed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
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