Development of a 1-DOF Compliant Mechanism to Support Rotation

Abstract

This paper presents a design of the 1 degree-of-freedom (DOF) compliant mechanism to support rotation, which can be used as the compliant bearing in rotary motor. With the simple idea of replacing the traditional bearings with the compliant counterparts, the compliant motor built by the developed mechanism is capable of creating frictionless and repeatable rotations for precise applications. The compliant bearing is synthesized based on a specific connection of beam-type flexures; its stiffness characteristic is analytically determined in this paper. Finite element analysis (FEA) is then used to verify the analytical results. The correctness of the bearing design is demonstrated through the small deviation between the analytical and FEA methods. With the simple structure of this compliant mechanism, a low-cost flexure-based bearing can be achieved to support rotary motions in precision devices such as actuators, sensors, positioners, etc.