A Numerical Improvement in Analyzing the Dynamic Characteristics of an Electrostatically Actuated Micro-beam in Fluid Loading with Free Boundary Approach

Abstract

Electrostatically actuated microbeams have been studied by many researchers in the last few years. The aim of this study is to present an improved numerical analysis of the dynamic instability of a cantilever microbeam immersed in an incompressible viscous fluid. The finite element method is used for solving the vibrational equation of the microbeam and the potential functions of the fluids in the coupled system. The proposed model is more stable for higher fluid densities and changes the area of the pull-in voltage. Finally, it has been shown that involving the free boundary condition affects the dynamic responses and pull-in conditions of the structure in comparison with pertinent literature.