Abstract
Compliant mechanisms are a new type of mechanism, designed to be flexible in order to achieve a specified motion as a mechanism. This paper presents a new structural optimization method for the design of compliant mechanisms based on the level set method. First, the basic details of a structural optimization method based on the level set method are briefly discussed. Next, an optimization problem that addresses the design of compliant mechanism considering the ratio of the displacement at the input location to the displacement at output point, and topological derivatives for this design problem are formulated. Based on this formulation and the level set method, a new structural optimization algorithm is constructed where the solving of the equilibrium equations and the updating of the level set function are performed using the FEM. Finally, several design examples are provided to confirm the usefulness of the proposed structural optimization method.
