Paper

Paper Name    Generalized constitutive equations for piezo-actuated compliant mechanism
Author    Junyi Cao, Mingxiang Ling, Daniel J Inman, Jing Lin
Publication/Completion Time    2016-08-09
Magazine Name    Smart Materials and Structures
Vol    25
Related articles   
Paper description    This paper formulates analytical models to describe the static displacement and force interactions between generic serial-parallel compliant mechanisms and their loads by employing the matrix method. In keeping with the familiar piezoelectric constitutive equations, the generalized constitutive equations of compliant mechanism represent the input–output displacement and force relations in the form of a generalized Hooke's law and as analytical functions of physical parameters. Also significantly, a new model of output displacement for compliant mechanism interacting with piezo-stacks and elastic loads is deduced based on the generalized constitutive equations. Some original findings differing from the well-known constitutive performance of piezo-stacks are also given. The feasibility of the proposed models is confirmed by finite element analysis and by experiments under various elastic loads. The analytical models can be an insightful tool for predicting and optimizing the performance of a wide class of compliant mechanisms that simultaneously consider the influence of loads and piezo-stacks.