Developing Multiple Topologies of Path Generating Compliant Mechanism (PGCM) using Evolutionary Optimization

The present work aims to evolve the multiple topologies of path generating compliant mechanisms. The trade-off solution’s based topologies are developed by simultaneously minimization of weight and supplied input energy to elastic structures. The functional aspect of these compliant mechanisms is accomplished by imposing the constraints on precision points to generate the user-defined path. These hard constraints are designed with some possibility of violation and are based on one user-defined parameter called allowable deviation (η). The present constraint bi-objective optimization formulation ensures the tracing of prescribed path by all feasible compliant mechanism topologies. The sensitivity of the evolved topologies is also investigated in this paper which is based on different η values. The evolutionary algorithm (NSGA-II) is customized in the present work to efficiently deal with the constraint bi-objective, non-linear and discrete problem of compliant mechanisms. The obtained non-dominated solutions after the termination of NSGA-II algorithm are further refined by a binary-variable based local search method. Overall, this study is expected to provide a platform to the designers and decision makers to understand the topological changes and the flexibility to choose a particular design of compliant mechanism as per their requirement from the non-dominated set of solutions.