Experimental and numerical investigation of a large stroke compliant revolute joint

Aiming at designing of a large stroke compliant revolute joint, this article presents an effective design method from the aspects of numerical and experimental investigation. Firstly, the topology optimization method is employed to produce the initial compliant revolute joint. The joint can control the rotational angle with a higher precision which is produced by elastic deformation. Then the structural reconstruction is carried out and finite element analysis of the reconstructed model is applied to analyze the performance of optimized compliant revolute joint. The simulation results show that these structures after being optimized can achieve greater rotational displacement than the structure before optimization, which can meet the demand for large rotational angle in the engineering applications. Additionally, the experimental investigation is presented to estimate the rotational angle and local strain. The joint is experimentally proven to offer a large range of rotational angle and satisfying the structural strength requirements. Comparing the simulation values and experimental values, this method can be confirmed well that these two results based on the two approaches are particularly close, and the feasibility of this design method is proved, which have a certain guiding significance in engineering application.