Synthesis and optimisation of large stroke flexure hinges

摘要: Flexure hinges are advantageous for use in high-precision applications because of their lack of hysteresis, friction and backlash. However, their range of motion is limited due to increasing stresses and a decreasing support stiffness at large strokes. Currently available hinges are typically designed for strokes of up to and only a small number of hinges achieve a stroke of . In this paper we present hinge concepts with a stroke up to . On the one hand, the conceptual design of such hinges is addressed and, on the other hand, a method to optimise the design of such hinges is presented. The hinge performance is measured by evaluating the natural frequency of the second relevant eigenmode of the hinge with a specific load. For best performance the minimal value for this frequency throughout the full operating range is maximised. Analysing known hinge concepts in view of this criterion gives insight in the …