Design of Compliant Mechanisms for Engineering Support - A Topology Optimisation Approach

Compliant mechanisms are the focus of active research because of the flexibility, stability and unitized construction. It is a single elastic continuum used to transfer the force and motion mechanically by elastic deformation without any links and joints. Authors proposed a topology optimisation method for designing a compliant amplifier and steps for conducting the numerical experiments for any design domains with different types of constraint. In this work three regular shapes of the design domains has been considered. The paper narrates the applications of the compliant mechanisms in new age industries like automotive, aerospace and other service industries for engineering support with specific examples. Numerical experiments are carried out for different basic configurations to design the compliant amplifier. The compliant amplifier is used for amplifying the displacement and stroke performance of the strain actuators when integrated with Piezo actuators. The objective is to maximize the geometric advantage of the compliant amplifier. The maximization of the objective is accomplished efficient design of compliant mechanisms by the topology optimisation approach. The analysis results help to select the best compliant amplifier design from the basic configurations. The outcome of work will be useful for all types of strain Actuators.