| Shape optimization is basically the idea of generating the best profile of a surface so that it improves its mechanical properties and minimizes some other properties such as weight and reduces stress concentration factor at corners. It is an important practice since it largely saves time, cost and material during the designing process.;Using method of subdivision includes refining a coarse grid of vertices to produce a set of refined vertices. This would alter the geometric features of the surface. The final shape and surface smoothness depends on the kind of refinement scheme applied to it and the number of iterative meshes the surface goes through for refinement.;In this thesis, Chaikin's method for subdivision will be used to subdivide the control points on the surfaces of two compliant mechanisms. Compliant displacement inverter and amplifier, and compliant gripper will be used for this analysis. For analysis purposes, the regular quadrilateral discretization and modified quadrilateral discretization will be considered as the topological optimization conditions for both the mechanisms. |
