4

I am looking for a solution on how to find the (approxmiate) shape when bending a rigid-flex circuit board. Please see the abstract sketch below. I have two solid objects ($A$, $B$) which are connected by a thin and flexible but non-stretchable strip of material.

Given that I know
(i) the position snf rotation of the fixed parts $A$ and $B$ in 2D space and
(ii) the length $d$ and thickness $w$ of the flexible connecting strip
how can I calculate the shape of the flexible strip when it is bent?

Any help would be highly appreciated, approximate solutions (which may assume $w=0$) are fine.

Sketch of Rigid-Flex PCB Bend

raisyn
  • 165

1 Answers1

0

A simple answer would be to connect the two ends of the strip through a circular arc of radius $R$ , such that the length of this arc is $d$ and its subtended angle at the center of the arc is $\pi - \alpha$.

Hence, $R (\pi - \alpha) = d $

i.e. $R = \dfrac{d}{\pi - \alpha} $

Hosam Hajeer
  • 21,978
  • Yeah; I used a bspline in with 3 control points for the sketch, which gives at least a nice look visually, but I wanted to approach it in more physically accurate way -- pretty sure that in real life it would neither bend in a circle profile nor in the bspline fashion. – raisyn Mar 30 '22 at 09:42