Conceptual Design, Performance Visualization and Dimension Improvement of a Flexure Parallel Manipulator

This paper presents a novel three degrees of freedom parallel manipulator based on flexure structure. There are three limbs connected with a moving stage and a fixed platform. Each limb is configured with a multilayer elastic driven mechanism and four flexure hinges. The kinematics model and Jacobian matrix is derived. Dexterity and workspace as two of the most important performance indices are investigated and visualized. Finite element analysis is conducted to observe the various behaviours including deformation, strain and frequency response under different inputs of piezo actuators. Both of the single objective optimization and multi-objective optimization are implemented to seek the optimal performance with the adjustment of dimensional parameters.