In mechanical engineering, compliant mechanisms are flexible mechanisms that transfer an input force or displacement to another point through elastic body deformation. These may be monolithic (single-piece) or jointless structures.
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Since many compliant mechanisms are single-piece structures, there is no need of assembly. With no joints, "rubbing" between two parts or friction as seen at the joints of rigid body mechanisms is absent. Compliant mechanisms are elastic.
Compliant mechanisms are usually designed using two techniques,Template:Http://www.cimec.org.ar/ojs/index.php/mc/article/viewFile/3015/2946 the first being a pseudo-rigid-body model and the second, the topology optimization. Other techniques are being conceived to design these mechanisms. Compliant mechanisms manufactured in a plane that have motion emerging from said plane are known as lamina emergent mechanisms (LEMs).
The flexible drive or resilient drive, often used to couple an electric motor to a machine (for example. a pump), is one example. The drive consists of a rubber "spider" sandwiched between two metal dogs. One dog is fixed to the motor shaft and the other to the pump shaft. The flexibility of the rubber part compensates for any slight misalignment between the motor and the pump. See rag joint and giubo.
The Second International Symposium on Compliant Mechanisms, was held on May 19-20, 2011 at Delft, Netherlands.
Research laboratories and researchers
A number of labs and researchers are explicitly researching compliant mechanisms:
In addition, the following researchers may be doing compliant mechanism research: