A study of the nonlinear response of a resonant microbeam to an electric actuation (Q1402532)

The authors study the influence of nonlinearities on the resonant response of microbeam to electric actuation. The nonlinearities may be of geometrical nature, and may be induced by electrical force nonlinearities. So, the integro-partial-differential equation with linear and nonlinear terms contains the external and parametric excitation terms. The clamped micrometer beam is studied which has the ratio of length to thickness less than 10. The influence of rotational inertia and shearing is neglected. The Duffing model of the beam first mode with cubic nonlinearities is insufficient, and it is necessary to account for quadratic nonlinearities which characterize the electric forces. The failure to correctly account for the nonlinearities in the system may lead to erroneous results because cubic nonlinearities predict rather a hardening behavior than the correct softening behavior. The comparison of experimental and theoretical results show their good coincidence.