Design of displacement amplifying compliant mechanisms with integrated strain actuator using topology optimization

Abstract

Compliant mechanisms are the focus of active research because of the stability, robustness, and ease of manufacturing endowed by their unitized construction. However, despite significant advances in the development of systematic design techniques for these mechanisms, currently compliant mechanisms are not capable of performing certain kinematic tasks that rigid body mechanisms can readily perform. This work explores the various advantages of the compliant mechanism and some of the difficulties in the design of the compliant mechanisms, and designing a compliant mechanism for displacement amplification of piezoelectric actuator is developed using a topological optimization approach. The overall stroke amplification of geometrical advantage of the mechanism and overall mechanical efficiency of the mechanism are considered as objective functions. The maximization of these objectives is accomplished using two different solution methods: a sequential linear programming and an optimality criteria method.