Advancement of Path Generating Compliant Mechanisms (PGCM) Topologies by Initial Population Strategy of Customized Evolutionary Algorithm

The present work demonstrates the advancement of evolved topologies of path generating compliant mechanisms by introducing initial population strategy with customized NSGA-II algorithm. The strategy is based on the categorization of design domain of compliant mechanisms that generates initial population of elastic continuum structures. It is anticipated in this paper that this strategy further customizes the evolutionary algorithm to efficiently deal with the compliant mechanism problems. In this work, constraint singleand bi-objective optimization formulations are used which were proposed in the previous studies of authors of this paper. Two examples of compliant mechanisms tracing downward curvilinear path and straight line path are solved and their respective topologies are presented. This study provides a platform to the designers and decision makers to understand the topological changes which result in trade-off between the posed-objectives. The present work also offers them to choose any PGCM topology as per their requirement from the non-dominated set of solutions.