Compliant Mechanisms: Design of Flexure Hinges
Flexure hinges hold several advantages over classical rotation joints, including no friction losses, no need for lubrication, no hysteresis, compactness, capacity to be utilized in small-scale applications, ease of fabrication, virtually no assembly, and no required maintenance. Compliant Mechanisms: Design of Flexure Hinges provides practical answers to the present and future needs of efficient design, analysis, and optimization of devices that incorporate flexure hinges. With a highly original approach the text:
- Discusses new and classical types of flexure hinges (single-, two- and multiple-axis) for two- and three-dimensional applications
- Addresses a wide range of industrial applications, including micro- and nano-scale mechanisms
- Quantifies flexibility, precision of rotation, sensitivity to parasitic loading, energy consumption, and stress limitations through closed-form compliance equations
- Offers a unitary presentation of individual flexure hinges as fully-compliant members by means of closed-form compliance (spring rates) equations
- Fully defines the lumped-parameter compliance, inertia and damping properties of flexure hinges
- Develops a finite element approach to compliant mechanisms by giving the elemental formulation of new flexure hinge line elements