A New Ant-Inspired 2-DOF Compliant Mechanism with High Frequency and Large Workspace for Potential Application in Material Testing

This study presents an optimal design approach for a novel compliant mechanism with two degrees of freedom (2-DOF). Inspired from the structure and motion behavior of ant, a new ant-inspired 2-DOF mechanism is developed. The designed mechanism permits a large workspace and a high frequency. The movement of the mobile platform is acted from a piezoelectric actuator through a combination of flexible hinge driving system and three-stage amplification mechanism. The hybrid amplifier consists of multi-lever amplification mechanism. The overall dimensions of the platform are 200 mm × 200 mm × 15 mm. This design offers a high lateral stiffness and a large resonant frequency. Static and dynamic models are formulated using a combination of pseudo-rigid-body model and Lagrange method. The optimum geometry of the mechanism is achieved through the water cycle algorithm. Finally, the physical experiments are evaluated for the prototype. The results found that the mechanism has a simulated resonant frequency of 797.62 Hz; while, the experimental resonant frequency is about 722.5 Hz. The workspace of the proposed mechanism was approximately 341 μm × 341 μm. The developed amplification mechanism could gain a high ratio of 10.278. The experimental results are in a good agreement with the simulated results with an approximately error of 9.4%. The 2-DOF mechanism is aimed to be used for a testing device of material’s properties as well as high precision positioning applications.