3106 Development of Compliant Mechanisms Based on Optimum Design

Abstract

This paper proposes an integrated design method for the design of practical compliant mechanisms. This proposed method consists of two steps. First a topology optimization is performed to provide an optimal topology and rough shape outlines of the structure. In the second step, the outline of the optimal structure is extracted from the topology optimization results, and the detailed smooth outline is created based on a newly developed extraction method based on the level set theory. Finally, a simple design example and its prototype are provided in order to confirm the validity and utility of the proposed method.