The determination and enhancement of compliant modes for high-amplitude actuation in lattices

This paper details the nonlinear design of adaptive lattices by determination and enhancement of compliant modes and optimizing the designed structure for delivering high amplitude actuation. The particular focus is the kagome lattice geometry-a pattern with some unique and useful actuation properties. Developing a novel design tool, the stiffness matrix of the beam assembly is calculated using a developed second-order geometrically nonlinear beam finite element formulation allowing large rotations. Based on this formulation in conjunction with singular value decomposition of the stiffness matrix, the modal optimization technique reduces the continuous structure with many degrees of freedom to a small number of low energy modes, which form the basis of designing the adaptive structure. For delivering high-amplitude actuation, the designed structure needs to be re-optimized due to changes in the nonlinear stiffness matrix under large deformation. This is performed via Bayesian optimization and by removing some internal members of the lattice. The integrity and feasibility of the optimum design is guaranteed via defining some constraints on removed members. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.