Large scale structures in the maritime industry can benefit from the design of complaint joints that can provide flexibility, adaptability and deployability. Local compliance can be achieved with the design of local flexures with material and geometrical nonlinearity, functional grading of the material, cellular structure and/or smart material integration. Additionally, by introducing contact-aided compliant mechanisms nonlinear bending stiffness can be achieved. This would make the joints flexible only when bended in one direction and stiff when bended in the opposite direction. All these concepts have been explored in the small scale engineering design, but they have not been applied in the maritime industry. Smart material development, additive manufacturing and design optimization can be utilized to explore the benefits of flexible, adaptable megastructures. Extreme weather and loading conditions, large scale size and manufacturability need to be taken into consideration in the design of maritime megastructures. 

In this paper the design and FEA modeling of a large scale compliant mechanism will be explored. As a case study an origami inspired shipping cargo container will be designed and analyzed. The standardized shipping containers that are mostly used in the transport industry do not have many improvements since the beginning of their usage. However, with the rise of e-commerce the parcels become smaller and the customers expect lower time to market. The shipping containers that we know of have to be adapted to the modern needs. One way is to design reconfigurable shipping containers which would make them adjustable to different quantities and parcel sizes. In this paper a novel design of a shipping container will be explored.

The superelasticity and shape memory effect of nickel titanium can be beneficial in designing the compliant mechanism. Moreover by introducing functional grading to the material the properties can be tailored for achieving the targeted deformations of the joints and with that control of the overall shape of the structure. These compliant superelastic joints might be added to the standardized containers’ designs that are already being used. This can make the containers reconfigurable, based on the current demand. The superelastic joints can be externally actuated with heat because of the shape memory effect, allowing stiff and flexible state configurations of the container.

Another way of achieving local compliance is with metamaterial flexures benefiting from the geometry and/or functional grading. Design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) could lead to an exploration of possible geometries and local material spatial distribution for achieving the desired global shape change. 


Design of Compliant Joints for Large Scale Structures

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace Division

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/SMASIS/SMASIS2020/volume/84027

SMASIS2020 - Virtual Conference

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.