Rigid-compliant hybrid cellular expansion mechanisms with motion amplification and superposition

Motivated by heat dissipation, the rigid-compliant hybrid cellular expansion mechanisms with motion amplification and superposition are proposed in this paper. Compared with existing studies, the expansion mechanism is not only easy to realize the plane tessellation via cellular design due to its regular polygon structure, but also has the ability of motion amplification and superposition due to its compliant displacement amplifier and rigid scissors. Firstly, scheme of expansion mechanisms, especially working principle of motion amplification and superposition are introduced. The configuration design of a family of expansion mechanisms is presented, including varying number of edges, concave/convex property, inner/outer layout. Secondly, the constraint condition and analytical modeling of relations between output performances of expansion mechanisms and dimensional parameters is carried out. Third, the displacement amplification ratio of expansion mechanisms, and output performances of several typical expansion mechanisms when they are acted as cells to tessellate a plane with constrained area are analyzed. Finally, the output performances of expansion mechanisms are verified via the finite element analysis. The results show that proposed cellular expansion mechanisms are beneficial for realizing plane tessellation, offer motion amplification and superposition, which provide prospects in the field of mechanism design such as metamaterials.