Beam-based analysis of flexure mechanisms

This video demonstrates the use of flexures for precision applications and introduces four recent improvements in our modelling method, which are detailed in separate videos:
1. The kinematically started deformation method accelerates the computation of deformed configurations.
2. A refinement of the stress computation in beam elements improves accuracy.
3. The width and thickness of flexures is varied over the length to improve the support stiffness.
4. The use of superelements enables efficient modelling of the deformation of arbitrarily shaped frame parts.

These improvements are part of the PhD research of Koen Dwarshuis at the Precision Engineering lab (Dannis Brouwer) at the University of Twente. Details can be found in the PhD thesis:
Dwarshuis, 2022. “Beam-based analysis of flexure mechanisms: Increasing computational efficiency, accuracy and design freedom” doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036554831

The shown spherical joint and the T-Flex are described in:
Naves et al. 2019. “Large stroke high off-axis stiffness three degree of freedom spherical flexure joint”. In: Precision engineering. doi.org/10.1016/j.precisioneng.2019.01.011
Naves et al. 2021. “T-Flex: A fully flexure-based large range of motion precision hexapod”. In: Precision engineering. doi.org/10.1016/j.precisioneng.2021.08.015

Research team:
Koen Dwarshuis, Ronald Aarts, Marcel Ellenbroek, Dannis Brouwer

Video by:
Koen Dwarshuis, Marijn Nijenhuis

Funding:
HTSM 2017, NWO (16210)