The performance comparison of typical notched flexure hinges

Abstract

Flexure hinges, which serve as the crucial joints in a large number of compliant mechanisms, have been widely applied in a variety of significant fields where there is high demand for the micro/nano motions with high resolution and high precision. Currently, an increasing number of notched flexure hinges with different structures and performances have been rapidly developed, but the existing performance comparisons on different notched flexure hinges were only conducted on seldom typical structures and are far from the comprehensiveness and fairness due to the different comparative conditions and discrepant evaluating indexes. Therefore, the finite beam-based matrix modeling method and nondimension precision factors will be employed in comprehensive comparing and ranking of 13 types of frequently-used notched flexure hinges in terms of their main compliances, motion accuracies, and stress concentrations, further providing useful practical guidelines to develop the compliant mechanisms with excellent overall performances.