Large Deflection Analysis of Compliant Beams of Variable Thickness and Non-Homogenous Material Under Combined Load and Multiple Boundary Conditions

This paper studies a new approach to analyze the large deflection behavior of prismatic and non-prismatic beams of non-homogenous material under combined load and multiple boundary conditions. the mathematical formulation has been derived which led to a set of six first-order ordinary differential equations. the geometrically nonlinear problem has been solved numerically using the multiple shooting method combined with a quadratic programming technique. the results obtained by presented method have been compared with the existing with less complex cases in the literature. the method may be applied to the design of compliant mechanisms, nonlinear springs or any related subject