Modeling flexible beams that undergo large deflection is one of the key steps in analyzing and synthesizing compliant mechanisms. Geometric nonlinearities introduced by large deflections often complicate the analysis of mechanism systems comprising such members. Several pseudo-rigid-body (PRB) or mudti segment models in the literature have been proposed to approximate the tip deflection and slope. However these models are either dependent on external loads or too complicated to analyze. They are neither appropriate for analyzing mechanisms in which loads change significantly as they move, nor for synthesizing mechanisms where a parametric model is preferred. In this paper, a load independent PRB 3R model which comprises of four rigid links joined by three revolute joints and three torsion springs is proposed. The traditional PRB 1R models are first studied for both small deflection beams and large deflection beams. These studies provide fundamental insights to the geometric nonlinear-ity of large deflection beams. Numerical integration is applied to compute tip deflections for various loads. A three-dimensional search routine has been developed to find the optimal set of characteristic radius factors for the proposed PRB 3R model. Detailed error analysis and comparison against the result by the numerical integration and the PRB 1R model are accomplished for different load modes. The benefits of the PRB 3R model include (a) high accuracy for large deflection beams, (b) load independence which is critical for applications where loads vary significantly and (c) ex- plicit kinematic and static constraint equations derived from the model. To demonstrate the use of the PRB 3R model, a compliant 4-bar linkage is studied and verified by a numerical example. The result shows a maximum tip deflection error of 1.2% compared with the FEA model.
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