Print Email Facebook Twitter The STAGE method for simultaneous design of the stress and geometry of flexure mechanisms Title The STAGE method for simultaneous design of the stress and geometry of flexure mechanisms Author Rommers, J. (TU Delft Mechatronic Systems Design) van der Wijk, V. (TU Delft Mechatronic Systems Design) Aragon, A.M. (TU Delft Computational Design and Mechanics) Herder, J.L. (TU Delft Mechatronic Systems Design) Date 2024 Abstract Current design methods for flexure (or compliant) mechanisms regard stress as a secondary, limiting factor. This is remarkable because stress is also known as a useful design parameter. In this paper we propose the Stress And Geometry (STAGE) method, to design the geometry of a flexure mechanism together with a desired stress field. From this design, the stress-free to-be-fabricated geometry is computed using the inverse finite element method. To demonstrate the potential of the method, the geometry of the well-known crossed-flexure pivot is taken as example. We first show how this mechanism can be redesigned for the same functional geometry with various internal stresses. This results for a specific choice of stress field in a design of a crossed-flexure pivot with 23% lower peak stresses during motion as compared to the known designs, for a ±45° rotation. We then present a second example, of a Folded Leaf Spring (FLS). With a parameter sweep the optimal stress field is calculated, showing a peak stress reduction of 28% during motion. This result was validated with an experiment, showing a normalized mean absolute error of 5.5% between experiment and theory. With a second experiment it was verified that the functional geometry of the FLS with internal stresses was equal to the one without internal stresses, with geometric deviations smaller than half the thickness of the flexures. Subject Compliant mechanismFlexure mechanismInverse FEMSTAGE methodStress designZero moment line To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a7900e35-5308-4ad1-960a-931a43ec39c1 DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.precisioneng.2024.05.021 ISSN 0141-6359 Source Precision Engineering, 89, 103-112 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2024 J. Rommers, V. van der Wijk, A.M. Aragon, J.L. Herder Files PDF 1-s2.0-S0141635924001193-main.pdf 1.94 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:a7900e35-5308-4ad1-960a-931a43ec39c1/datastream/OBJ/view