Advanced Mechanisms Design: Flexure Mechanisms and Applications

This lecture focuses on advanced mechanisms design, specifically examining flexure mechanisms and their applications. It begins with an overview of blade deformation modes, including cantilever and S-shaped modes. The instructor discusses flexure building blocks, which consist of elementary flexible elements known as flexure bricks, and how these bricks combine to form flexure joints and mechanisms. The lecture highlights the concept of degrees of freedom (DOF) and the degree of constraint (DoC) in flexure mechanisms, emphasizing the importance of stiffness and stroke characteristics. Various functions of flexure mechanisms are explored, such as guiding, amplification, bistable behavior, and energy storage. The instructor also addresses the customization of coupling degrees of freedom and the kinematics involved in motion conversion and inversion. The lecture concludes with a discussion on tunable motion and path generation, showcasing the versatility and applications of flexure mechanisms in engineering design.