Analytical and experimental characterisation of high-precision flexural pivots subjected to lateral loads

Abstract This work addresses the parasitic motion of high-precision rotation mechanisms based on flexural pivots subjected to lateral loads. This case has great importance from the mechanical design point of view, since generally flexural pivots support mechanical elements of considerable weight and their rotation is obtained by loading the pivot with a force instead of a pure couple. From an analytical point of view, the problem is approached by studying the large deflections of an elastic frame. The equilibrium equations are considered and a solution based on the Newton–Raphson method is proposed. This approach is compared with other theoretical approaches. An experimental assessment performed by using laser interferometric techniques is presented. It is shown that the proposed solution allows the influence of lateral loads to be clearly established and proves to be adequate when the most common cases of limited lateral loads and rotations are considered.