Dynamics of a compliant mechanism based on flexure hinges

Abstract

This paper presents a novel equation of motion for flexure hinge-based mechanisms. The conventional equation of motion presented in previous work does not adequately describe the behaviours of rigid bodies for the following reasons: firstly, rotational directions for a transformed stiffness lack consistency at the two ends of a flexure hinge; secondly, the length of the flexure hinge is not considered in the equation. The equation of motion proposed in this study solves these problems. Modal analyses are carried out using the proposed equation of motion, the conventional equation of motion found in previous work, and a finite element method. The results show that the proposed equation of motion describes the behaviours of the rigid bodies better than the conventional equation of motion does.