Performance Analysis of Circular Arc and Elliptical Hinge For Flexural Stages

Design of compliant system requires a careful design of flexural hinges being its major component. Such
systems find wide use in high precision positioning and scanning applications. Numbers of flexible joints
are proposed previously which are often designed based on intuition of designers and past experiences.
This study compares two major types of flexible hinges viz. circular arc hinge and elliptical hinge used in
compliant systems based on their functional parameters. Each joint is evaluated to study the effect of
change in geometric configuration on hinge performance matrices which include range of motion, motion
accuracy and stress concentration in ANSYS Workbench. From the analysis results it is observed that
trade-off exists between deflection and stress. Circular arc joints outperform elliptical joints for motion
direction compliance while elliptical hinges exhibit good guiding accuracy as compared to circular arc.