On the modeling of flexure hinge mechanisms with finite beam elements of variable cross section

•We propose a finite element based modeling technique for flexure hinge mechanisms.•The proposed method is able to capture the static and dynamic behavior.•Compared to commonly used 2D or 3D modeling techniques, the proposed method offers an enormous reduction of degrees of freedom while preserving the accuracy of the reference results.•The method is easy to use and a significant reduction in degrees of freedom is achieved.

In this paper, a modeling technique for flexure hinge mechanisms is studied. Beam elements of variable cross sections are deployed within a finite element procedure to model a circular flexure hinge. The resulting finite element model has very few degrees of freedom and is accurate in both static and dynamic analysis. Furthermore the modeling approach is applied to an amplifier mechanism. Comparing the results of the proposed model with a 3D finite element reference model, high accuracy for a broad spectrum of hinge parameters is reported while reducing the number of degrees of freedom immensely.