Deformation analysis for curved compound eye in micro-replica process

Focusing on the difficulty of manufacturing curved bionic compound lens with big field of view, a manufacturing process based on the pneumatic auxiliary micro-replication of polymer elastomer is proposed to realize fast and low cost production of bionic compound eye. Then ABAQUS software is adopted to analyze the large deformation of polymer elastomer and microlens deformation problems in gas-assisted micro-replica process, and the dependence of surface profile upon the molding pressure and size variation of mircrolens in different sphere latitude are revealed and compared with the experiments. During curved surface forming, the surface profile gets spherical whose diameter depends upon the molding pressure; the deformation rates of microlens along the sphere latitude remain equal, and the microlens diameter on different latitude increases by 9.45% to 10.56%. The curved bionic compound lens possesses different focal planes along the sphere latitude and larger field of view than planar microlens array.