Research on a novel compliant mechanism applied in the vehicle side door latch and stability analysis via Lyapunov exponents.

The functional reliability of the vehicle latch is very important and is determined by the internal mechanism's motion stability. In this paper, a novel compliant mechanism constructed with a novel compliant joint is applied to the vehicle latch, and multiple mode motions of the mechanism realize the newly added electric power release function. The repeatability of mechanism trajectories and phase diagrams of several different periodic motions is creatively regarded as the stability of the compliant mechanism. In this compliant mechanism, the endpoint of the groove-coupler is chosen as a characteristic point and the compliant joint's spring stiffness k _T is taken as the key parameter to obtain trajectories and phase diagram. It is found that all cycle overlapping phase diagrams possess intuitively good repeatability, except in two locally specific regions. Then, Wolf's numerical calculation method of Lyapunov exponents is utilized to analyze the motion stability of the compliant mechanism. An appropriate range (1.0–1.05 N mm/°) of the joint stiffness k _T is obtained, satisfying the stability criterion. Finally, characteristic point trajectory and functional experiments with k _T = 1 N mm/° are conducted to verify the motion stability of the compliant mechanism. The method of mechanism motion stability analysis by means of Lyapunov exponents can be applied to other under-actuated mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]