FE-Analysis of Bio-inspired Compliant Mechanisms in Matlab for Medical Applications

In this paper, we present a novel simulation tool in Matlab for performing geometrically non-linear finite element analysis (FEA) on bio-inspired compliant mechanisms for medical applications. In our institute, we are developing automatic design processes of various 3D-printable medical robots and mechanisms for surgical assistance. The bioinspired compliant mechanisms are frequently used in our design because of their simple structure and high flexibility. Our automatic design platform (called SG Library) is developed in Matlab since Matlab is a multidisciplinary developing environment in which various design methods are integrated. The FEA tool presented in this paper is an important part of our SG Library and has extended the linear FEA of Matlab's Partial Differential Equation (PDE) Toolbox so that the compliant mechanisms with non-linear large deflections can also be analyzed with plausible results. With this new simulation tool, the design and FE-simulation process of compliant mechanisms can be performed in the same environment automatically, which accelerates the design process greatly.