Static Balancer Design for a Compliant Laparoscopic Grasper

Static Balancer Design for a Compliant Laparoscopic Grasper

Steinthorsson, A.T.

Herder, J.L. (mentor)
Aguirre, M.E. (mentor)

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

Precision and Microsystems Engineering

Mechatronic System Design

2015-04-24

Compliant mechanisms (CM) are a growing part of many different fields from MEMS to surgical devices. They offer a solution to classical mechanical drawbacks, such as friction, backlash, lubrication and assembly. One particular field of application concentrates on stiffness balance, also known as static balancing(SB), of mechanical systems. This research focuses on identifying critical design parameters of buckling bi-stable beams and their performance influence to be used for compensating the actuation stiffness of a compliant laparoscopic grasper. A finite element model verified by prototyping showed that beam designs using double pinned boundary conditions(BC) had a 260% and 128% higher negative stiffness then double clamped and clamped/pinned BC respectively. A novel stiffness tuning design was shown to vary the stiffness of double pinned bi-stable beams by up to 80%.

static balancing
compliant mechanism
laparoscopic grasper
design method
stiffness tuning
beam boundary conditions

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7069a4f7-235e-435a-9f66-a18fa4224e4a

2018-04-24

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2015 Steinthorsson, A.T.