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Design of compliant straight-line mechanisms using flexural joints

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Abstract

Straight-line compliant mechanisms are important building blocks to design a linear-motion stage, which is very useful in precision applications. However, only a few configurations of straight-line compliant mechanisms are applicable. To construct more kinds of them, an approach to design large-displacement straight-line flexural mechanisms with rotational flexural joints is proposed, which is based on a viewpoint that the straight-line motion is regarded as a compromise of rigid and compliant parasitic motion of a rotational flexural joint. An analytical design method based on the Taylor series expansion is proposed to quickly obtain an approximate solution. To illustrate and verify the proposed method, two kinds of flexural joints, cross-axis hinge and leaf-type isosceles-trapezoidal flexural(LITF) pivot are used to reconstruct straight-line flexural mechanisms. Their performances are obtained by analytic and FEA method respectively. The comparisons of the results show the accuracy of the approach. Both examples show that the proposed approach can convert a large-deflection flexural joint into approximate straight-line mechanism with a high linearity that is higher than 5 000 within 5 mm displacement. This can lead to a new way to design, analyze or optimize straight-line flexure mechanisms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Xu Pei, Jingjun Yu, Guanghua Zong & Shusheng Bi

Authors
  1. Xu Pei
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  2. Jingjun Yu
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  3. Guanghua Zong
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  4. Shusheng Bi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xu Pei.

Additional information

This project is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51275552), and Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of China (Grant No. 201234)

PEI Xu, born in 1979, is currently a lecturer at School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, China. He received his PhD degree from Beihang Universtiy, China, in 2009. His main research interests include Parallel mechanisms, compliant mechanisms, and robotics.

YU Jingjun, born in 1974, is currently an associate professor at Robotics Institute, Beihang University, China. He received his PhD degree from Beihang Universtiy, China, in 2002. His main research interests include Parallel mechanisms, compliant mechanisms, robotics and screw theory.

ZONG Guanghua, born in 1943, is currently a professor at Robotics Institute, Beihang University, China. His research interests include compliant mechanisms, mobile robots, etc.

BI Shusheng, born in 1966, is currently a professor at Robotics Institute, Beihang University, China. He received his PhD degree from Beihang University, China, in 2002. His research interests include bionic under water robots, bird-like robots, and flexible micro-structure design.

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Pei, X., Yu, J., Zong, G. et al. Design of compliant straight-line mechanisms using flexural joints. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. 27, 146–153 (2014). https://doi.org/10.3901/CJME.2014.01.146

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3901/CJME.2014.01.146

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