Design and analysis of an umbrella foldable compliant metamorphic mechanism

Compliant metamorphic mechanism can be defined as mechanism whose configuration can be changed due to the flexibility of its members. Some characters of compliant mechanism can improve the performance and efficiency of metamorphic mechanism. An umbrella foldable compliant mechanism is proposed in this paper. It contains characters of both metamorphic mechanism and compliant mechanism. Based on the pseudo-rigid-body mode, the analysis is carried out on kinematics, topology and stability of this mechanism. At last, the kinematical simulation is done for this mechanism. The result verifies that the pseudo-rigid-body method is effective for compliant metamorphic mechanism design and analysis.