Synthesis of Compliant Mechanisms based on Goal-Oriented Design Guidelines for Prismatic Flexure Hinges with Polynomial Contours

Compliant mechanisms are state of the art in high-precision motion systems. Therefore, often prismatic flexure hinges with basic cut-out geometries are used as revolute joints to realize an approximated rotation of a few degrees. Since the motion range and precision of a compliant mechanism depend on the flexure hinge design, the contour and hinge dimensions have to be considered as free parameters for the synthesis. Regarding this, polynomial contours are particularly suitable because they allow a simple modelling and a variable design too. In this paper, novel design guidelines for compliant mechanisms with identical or different polynomial contours are presented based on the rigid-body replacement synthesis method. Using the example of a compliant slider-crank mechanism it will be shown that the stress and path accuracy for the rectilinear guiding of a coupler point can be improved by using a look-up table and design graph instead of a multi-criteria optimization.