FlexSys Owns State-of-the-Art Design Tools

Compliant systems can be significantly more challenging to design than their conventional rigid-link counterparts. FlexSys develops and maintains automated computational design tools based on theories of structural optimization to design high-performance compliant systems. These tools lay out sophisticated flexible structures that accommodate a multitude of conflicting constraints, such as limitations on stress, deflection, frequency response, and fatigue life.

Distributed Flexion Allows For Stronger Mechanisms

Through our design techniques, we distribute flexion evenly throughout the compliant system in order to avoid stress concentrations, maximize performance, ensure reliability, and improve manufacturability. Out-dated design methods are based on replacing joints with thin flexure hinges, or trial-and-error. These approaches are very time-consuming and can result in mechanisms that function poorly, have significant stress concentrations (resulting in reduced life), and are difficult to fabricate given the thick/thin transitions at the flexure hinges. Our automated design tools represent a leap forward over traditional flexure hinge and trial-and-error approaches.

A Myriad of Actuators Are Possible

We can incorporate various types of actuation technologies, such as smart materials or electrostatic actuators, into our compliant systems to create fully monolithic, “solid-state” mechanical systems.