Large-Deflection Analysis of General Beams in Contact-Aided Compliant Mechanisms Using Chained Pseudo-Rigid-Body Model

The nonlinear analysis and design of contact-aided compliant mechanisms (CCMs) are challenging. This paper presents a nonlinear method for analyzing the deformation of general beams that contact rigid surfaces in CCMs. The large deflection of the general beam is modeled by using the chained pseudo-rigid-body model. A geometry constraint from the contact surface is developed to constrain the beam's deformed configuration. The contact analysis problem is formulated based on the principle of minimum potential energy and solved using an optimization algorithm. Besides, a novel technique based on the principle of work and energy is proposed to calculate the reaction force/moment of displacement-loaded cases. Several analysis examples of the compliant mechanisms with straight or curved beams are used to verify the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method and technique can evaluate the deformation of beam-based CCMs and the reaction force/moment with acceptable accuracy, respectively.