Textile-Reinforced Thermoplastics for Compliant Mechanisms - Application and Material Phenomena.

Compliant mechanisms are single-piece structures obtaining their desired motion through elastic deformation of flexible parts. The performance of compliant mechanisms is highly dependent on the material properties, which have to be characterized over a wide range of loads. Textile glass fiber reinforced polypropylene is identified as valuable material for compliant structures. The material properties and damage phenomena for tension, shear and compression loading as well as for cyclic loading are elaborated under special consideration of elastic and inelastic deformations. Local strain measurements in the vicinity of an open hole sharpen the validity of homogenized models for textile reinforcements and directing towards multi-scale approaches for a localized deformation analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]