Design and analysis the compliant inner tristable mechanism with chain beam constraint method

The compliant tristable mechanism is a structure that keeps the three stable equilibrium positions through the storage and delivers the energy during the deflections of flexible elements. The compliant inner tristable mechanism (CITM) has two bistable mechanisms connect with two mass on one side of the half model and the fixed ends inside the mechanism. This paper introduces the process of design the CITM with the numerical method. The chain beam constraint method (CBCM) is utilized to predict the nonlinear performance of the mechanism. The finite element method is implemented to compare with the numerical method.