Mechanical design of a compliant prosthesis finger by structural topology optimization

This paper presents the problem formulation and design of compliant prosthesis finger. The finger is a path generating compliant mechanism. The automated synthesis of path generating mechanisms is by a structural topology optimization approach. The problem of topology optimization of continuum structures is solved using a multiobjective genetic algorithm coupled with a geometric representation scheme using fat Bezier curve that efficiently defines the variable structural geometry upon a finite element grid. A graph-theoretic chromosome encoding together with compatible crossover and mutation operators are then applied to form an effective evolutionary optimization procedure. One finger has been designed and are presented in this paper, and some concluding remarks and future work are put forward.