Large Deflection Analysis of Compliant Beams of Variable Thickness and Nonhomogenous Material under Combined Load and Multiple Boundary Conditions

This paper studies a new approach to analyze the large deflection behavior of prismatic and nonprismatic beams of non-homogenous material under combined load and multiple boundary conditions.The mathematical formulation has been derived which led to a set of six first-order ordinarydifferential equations. The geometrically nonlinear problem has been solved numerically using the multiple shooting method combined with a quadratic programming technique. The results obtained bypresented method have been compared with the existing with less complex cases in the literature. Themethod may be applied to the design of compliant mechanisms, nonlinear springs or any related subject.

Keywords:

Large Deflection , Compliant Mechanisms , Geometric Nonlinearity , Multiple Shooting Method , Quadratic Programming