Bend and be straight; The stiff and unbending is the disciple

of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of

life.
Lao Tse

A compliant structure is a monolithic joint-less mechanism that exploits the elasticity of

material to produce a
desired functionality. These functionalities can include: force or motion transmission, motion
guidance, shape
morphing, and/or energy storage and release. A compliant system consists of actuators and
sensors integrated
within the compliant structure for transmission [7]. The arrangement of the material within the
compliant
mechanism is optimized so compliance is distributed through small strains to produce large
deformations, as
shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: A simple gripper mechanism illustrates the distributed nature of compliance.

Note that the design does not embody any flexural joints, which create stress concentrations
and poor fatigue
life. In contrast, compliance is distributed to lower maximum stress, thereby significantly
improve fatigue life.
Just as designs in nature are strong but compliant, so are bio-inspired complaint
mechanisms, which enhance
"value" in a number of ways:
Minimize or eliminate assembly requirements;

 Excellent repeatability since there is no backlash;

No joints means no joint friction, backlash, or need for lubrication;
Can easily couple with modern actuators, such as piezoelectric, shape-memory alloy,
electro-thermal,
electrostatic, fluid pressure, and electromagnetic actuators;
Can create motions not possible with conventional rigid devices;
Materials friendly: can be built from any highly resilient material, including steel, aluminum,
nickelMission
Adaptive Compliant Wing
Design, Fabrication and Flight Test
18- 4 RTO-MP-AVT-168
titanium alloys, polysilicon, ABS, polypropylene, polymer and metal matrix composites etc.;
Weight reduction: no need for restoring springs or bulky hinges.
Fatigue resistant

A compliant mechanism can be defined as single piece flexible

structure, which uses elastic deformation to achieve force and motion
transmission. It gains some or all of its motion from the relative flexibility of
its members rather than from rigid body joints alone. Such mechanism,
withbuilt-in flexible segments, is simpler and replaces multiple rigid parts, pin
joints and Add-on springs. Hence, it can often save space and reduce costs of
parts, materials and assembly labor.

Other possible benefits of designing compliance into devices may be

reductions in weight, friction, noise, wear, backlashand importantly,
maintenance. There are many familiar examples of compliant mechanisms
designed in single-piece that replaced rigid-link mechanisms, which will be
highlighted in other section in this study. Figure 1, shows examples of
compliant mechanisms used commonly.

Fig. 1: Common compliant devices. A binder clip, paper clip, backpack latch, lid, eyelash
curler and nail clippers are

Compliant mechanisms are popular in mechanical design for multiple reasons:

they are easy to fabricate, exhibit low wear and low friction,
and have a built-in restoring force [1], [2]. They are often preferred over their
rigid-body counterparts in various applications including
micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) [3], surgery [4], torque-measurements
[5], etc.
Compliant mechanisms are synthesized today through one of two distinct
methods [6]: (1) pseudo rigid body models, and (2) topology
optimization. The relative advantages of these two methods are discussed, for
example, in [6], [7]. The focus of this paper is on topology
optimization of compliant mechanisms.
Topology optimization of compliant mechanisms entails two tasks: (1) Design
formulation: How does one formulate and pose the design
problem of compliant mechanisms, i.e., how does one prioritize various
objectives such as flexibility, stiffness, and efficiency? (2) Spatial
parameterization: How does one parameterize the spatial domain to solve the
design problem?
Various design formulations and spatial parameterization techniques have been
proposed; these are reviewed in Section 2. Typically, any
combination of the two can be chosen; however, certain pairs have been
established to be robust and efficient.
In this paper, a specific combination of design formulation and spatial
parameterization method is considered; this combination relies
heavily on the concept of topological derivative rather than pseudo-densities
used in Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP).
By avoiding pseudo-densities, many of the hinge-problems are avoided; see, for
example, [8], [9]. The proposed methodology is
established in Section 3, while the implementation details are discussed in
Section 4. This is followed by numerical experiments in Section

5, and conclusions in Section 6.

Traditional rigid body mechanisms consist of rigid links connected at movable joints and are
capable of transforming linear motion into rotation or force into torque. A rigid mechanism
does
not have mobility, so it does not perform any work, it simply transfers energy. Since energy is
conserved between the input and output, the output force may be much larger than the input
force (mechanical advantage), but the output displacement is much smaller than the input
displacement (geometric advantage) or vice versa
Compliant mechanisms rely on the deflection of flexible members to store energy in the
form of strain energy. This stored energy is similar to the potential energy in a deflected
spring.
Thus compliant mechanisms can be used to easily store and/or transform energy that can be
released at a later time or in a different manner. The simplest example of compliant
mechanism
is the bow, shown in figure 2.2, used to shoot arrows.

The first attempt at integrating compliance into

mechanisms occurred in the 1960s when engineers began to replace pined joints with
flexible
members. These flexible members were limited to small a region where the joint was
originally
located and comprised a small part of the mechanism design.

The overall size of the compliant mechanism is regulated by restricting the design
domain of the optimization problem. The optimization problem is evaluated by discretizing
the
device area into nodes that are connected by beam elements which serve and an initial guess.
Figure 4.3 shows two examples of discritizing a design domain into an array of nodes and
beam
elements. Certain nodes are fixed to simulate locations where the device is anchored, and the
remaining nodes are allowed to wonder within a controlled space defined by the user.3,10 The

optimization process is carried out by varying the cross sectional area of each of the beam
elements and using finite element analysis to evaluate the objective function. Kota et al.
ensure
that the optimization process is well behaved by defining constraints for the cross-sectional
area
of the beam elements.10,13 The optimal design is determined by eliminating all elements that
reach the minimum value. In this way one eliminates all beam elements that do not contribute
to
the compliance of the mechanism

Figure 4.3 The above figure show two examples of discritizing a

design domain into an array of nodes and beam
elements. (a) and (c) The design domain used in the topology synthesis of a displacement amplification
transmission and a micro-gripper respectively. (b) and (d) The ground structure of beam elements which
provides
an initial guess for the optimal topology.

7. AVAILABLE SOFTWARE
A few Matlab and web based simulation software programs are available to assist in
designing
aspects of the complaint mechanisms. The research group of Prof. G. K. Ananthasuresh has
developed PennSyn 1.0 which generates compliant topologies, animates the resulting motion,
creates an IGES file of the solution, and stores the solution for later use. It is implemented
using
Matlab 5.3. The PennSyn 1.0 software package is available on the web at
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~gksuresh/mylinks.html.
Professor Ole Sigmund at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and his group has
developed a web-based topology optimization program TOPOPT. This program solves the
general topology optimization problem of distributing a given amount of material in a design
domain subject to load and support conditions, such that the stiffness of the structure is
maximized. The type and size of problems that can be solved using the web-based TOPOPT
program are very limited. To access the program, link to http://www.topopt.dtu.dk/. Prof.
Sigmunds group has also developed TopOpt3D program for 3D Stiffness optimization using

Topology Optimization and top.m, a 99 line topology optimization code written in MATLAB.
This is developed for engineering education in structural optimization. It can be used to do
extensions such as multiple load-cases, alternative mesh-independency schemes, passive
areas,
etc.16

[5] - Sevak, N. M., and McLarnan, C. W., Optimal Synthesis of Flexible Link Mechanisms
with Large Static Deflections, Journal of Engineering for Industry, Trans. ASME, May
1975, pp. 520-526
[6]- Midha, A., Her, I., and Salamon, B. A., A Methodology for Compliant Mechanisms
Design: Part I Introduction and Large Deflection Analysis, Advances in Design
Automation, 18th ASME Design Automation Conference, DEVol. 44, No. 2, 1992, pp. 29-38
[7]- Midha, A., Her, I., and Salamon, B. A., A Methodology for Compliant Mechanisms
Design: Part II Introduction and Large Deflection Analysis, Advances in Design
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[8]- Ananthasuresh, G. K., A New Design Paradigm for Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems
and Investigations on the Compliant Mechanism Synthesis, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
Michigan, Ann-Arbor, 1994
[9]- Parkinson, M. B., Howell, L. L., and Cox, J. J., A Parametric Approach to the
Optimization-Based Design of Compliant Mechanisms, Proceedings of the ASME Design
Engineering Technical Conferences, Sacramento, California, September, 1997
[10] - Courtesy of (Compliant systems design laboratory University of Michigan)
[11] - Courtesy of ( Brigham Young University , Compliant Mechanism Research )
[12] - Howell, L. L. (2001). Compliant Mechanisms. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
[13] - Statically Balanced Compliant Mechanisms Theory and Synthesis , Juan A. Gallego
[14] - L. L. Howell and A. Midha. A method for the design of compliant mechanisms with
small-length flexural pivots. Journal of Mechanical Design, 116(1):280290, 1994.}}
[15] - L. L. Howell, A. Midha, and T. W. Norton. Evaluation of equivalent spring stiffness in
a pseudo-rigid-body model of large-deflection compliant mechanisms. Journal of Mechanical
Design, Transactions of the ASME, 118(1):126131, 1996.
[16] - L. L. Howell and A. Midha, Parametric deflection approximations for end-loaded,
large deflection beams in compliant mechanisms. Journal of Mechanical Design,
117(1): 156165,1995
[17] - S. R. Deepak, M. Dinesh, and G. K. Ananthasuresh , A comparative study of the
formulations for topology optimization of compliant mechanisms. In Proceedings of the
ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference, Brooklyn, New York, USA, 2008.
[18] - A. Saxena and G. K. Ananthasuresh.,On an optimal property of compliant topologies.
Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 19(1):3649, 2000.

[19] -K. J. Lu and S. Kota, Parameterization strategy for optimization of shape morphing
compliant mechanisms using load path representation. In the Proceedings of the ASME
Design Engineering Technical Conference, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2003.
[20] - K.J. Lu and S. Kota, An effective method of synthesizing compliant adaptive structures
using load path representation. Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures,
16(4):307317, 2005
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[22] - FlexSys Inc. www.flxsys.com.
10. S. Kota, J. Hetrick, Z. Li, L. Saggere. Tailoring Unconventional Actuators Using
Compliant Transmissions: Design Methods and Applications. ASME/IEEE
Transactions in Mechatronics. 4(4) 396-408 (1999)
[23] - Annem Narayana Reddy, Nandan Maheshwari, Deepak Kumar Sahu, and G. K.
Ananthasuresh, Miniature Compliant Grippers With Vision- Based Force Sensing, IEEE
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