Compliant Mechanisms - Integration of Micro Gripping Device with Positioner Using Topological Optimization

Material energy and cost minimization has been the need of the hour off late. The work aims at designing a micro gripping device which has suitable application in bio medical industry; specifically surgical operation of comminuted fracture using CAE software. Being a combination of an inverter and a clip, the ability of the compliant mechanism to be used as a gripper as well as positioner constitutes its rare versatility. The compliant mechanisms are single-piece structures, having no backlash as in case of rigid-body, jointed mechanisms and comparatively cheaper to manufacture. Designed in MATLAB R2008a using the concept of topological optimization, modeled in AutoCAD Mechanical 2011 and analyzed in ANSYS Workbench 13.0; the mechanism is initially designed with a geometrical advantage of 2. The MATLAB code which is an improvement of the 99 line code written by O. Sigmund contains the main program; the Optimality Criteria based optimizer; a mesh independency filter and the finite element code.