Development of a multistage compliant mechanism with new boundary constraint

This paper presents a piezo-actuated compliant mechanism with a new boundary constraint to provide concurrent large workspace and high dynamic frequency for precision positioning or other flexible manipulation applications. A two-stage rhombus-type displacement amplifier with the "sliding-sliding" boundary constraint is presented to maximize the dynamic frequency while retaining a large output displacement. The vibration mode is also improved by the designed boundary constraint. A theoretical kinematic model of the compliant mechanism is established to optimize the geometric parameters, and a prototype is fabricated with a compact dimension of 60 mm × 60 mm × 12 mm. The experimental testing shows that the maximum stroke is approximately 0.6 mm and the output stiffness is 1.1 N/μm with the fundamental frequency of larger than 2.2 kHz. Lastly, the excellent performance of the presented compliant mechanism is compared with several mechanisms in the previous literature. As a conclusion, the presented boundary constraint strategy provides a new way to balance the trade-off between the frequency response and the stroke range widely existed in compliant mechanisms.