CAREER: A Theoretical Framework for the Conceptual Design of Compliant Systems

这个教师早期职业发展（CAREER）项目的研究目标是提供一个理论框架，推进顺应系统的概念设计的最新技术。 这项工作的目标是（一）开发动态综合理论的概念生成的顺应机制，（二）获得一个基本的了解顺应机制的设计问题，寻求他们的整体解决方案，通过计算算法的基础上，全局收敛的多项式求解器，和（iii）探索使用虚拟现实（VR）环境的互动设计顺应机制。 教育目标是通过将虚拟现实引入不同层次的设计课程、创新挑战暑期课程和独特的虚拟现实演示日计划，激发K-12、本科生和研究生学习工程学科的兴趣。如果成功，这项研究将产生一套概念设计工具，克服现有方法的不足，使自动功能，柔性机构设计中的形式变换。 这些工具将提高工业设计用于制造、机器人、汽车和国防等领域的高性能兼容机器设备的能力，这反过来将有助于美国保持其经济领导地位，并维持其在高科技工作岗位中的份额。 拟议中的教育计划将改变工程师在幼儿中的刻板形象，吸引更多的高中生攻读工程学科学位，并为行业培养具有全球竞争力的设计工程师。

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to provide a theoretical framework for advancing the state-of-art of the conceptual design of compliant systems. The goal of this work is to (i) develop a kinetostatic synthesis theory for the concept generation of compliant mechanisms, (ii) gain a fundamental understanding of compliant mechanism design problems by seeking their entire solution via computational algorithms based on globally convergent polynomial solvers, and (iii) explore the use of virtual reality (VR) environments for the interactive design of compliant mechanisms. The educational objective is to stimulate the interests of K-12, undergraduate and graduate students in learning engineering subjects through the introduction of virtual reality to different levels of design courses, an Innovation Challenge summer course, and a unique Virtual Reality Demo Day program.If successful, this research will result in a set of conceptual design tools that overcome the shortfalls of existing approaches and enable the automatic function-to-form transformation in the design of compliant mechanisms. These tools will increase the ability of industry to design high performance compliant machine devices used in the fields of manufacturing, robotics, automobile and defense etc. This in turn will help the U.S. maintain its economic leadership and sustain its share of high-technology jobs. The proposed educational program will change the stereotypical image of engineers in young children, attract more high school students pursuing degrees in engineering disciplines and educate globally competent design engineers for industry.