Design and layout of compliant mechanisms

Compliant mechanisms can be used as an alternative to conventional mechanisms in many areas of application. Desired movements are realised through the elastic deformation of the material rather than the sliding and rolling of elements. This offers several advantages, including reduced individual part numbers, monolithic component design, freedom from friction, wear and backlash, low sensitivity to dirt, increased cleanliness, reduced maintenance effort, arbitrary scalability, increased precision and an improved load capacity-to-mass ratio.

At the Professorship MP, the optimisation-based design process for compliant mechanisms is a key area of research. Drawing on this expertise, we offer a comprehensive product development service for compliant systems, covering everything from design and concept to detailed construction. Possible applications range from designing individually adapted flexure hinges for coupling with conventional components and flexure actuators to creating compliant designs to substitute classical components and mechanisms for load transfer and shape-adaptive systems.