Analysis of a novel 2-DOF flexure hinge-based parallel micromanipulator in a polar coordinate system

Based on flexure hinges, a novel two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) compliant parallel micromanipulator driven by piezoelectric actuator (PZT) is presented in this paper. According to the designed mechanism structure, a pseudo rigid body (PRB) model is set up, and then the kinematics and statics are studied in a polar coordinate system. The workspace analysis is given subsequently according to the motion ranges of flexure hinges and actuators. To examine the static performance of the mechanism and verify the accuracy of the established kinematic model, finite element analysis (FEA) is carried out using ANSYS software. The simulation result also reveals that the mechanism has ideal linearity in terms of the kinematic and static properties.