A STUDY OF DESIGN FLEXIBLE FORCE OUTPUT OF COMPLIANT BISTABLE MECHANISM WITH LIMITED SPACE

Abstract

This paper reports a new compliant bistable micromechanism (BM) with the flexibility of force output under a space constraint. The mechanism has four Bézier curved beams and a shuttle mass at its center. Bézier curves offer high flexibility for design of beam shapes of BMs. Compared to the conventional BMs with cosine curved beams and slanted straight beams, the BM with Bézier curved beam can be designed to have smaller switching forces under the same device area and thickness.