[mems-talk] Electrostatic bending of two cantilevers

[Andrew O'Grady]

Hi everyone,

I need to model the electrostatic bending of two cantilever beams towards
each other, and am running into some difficulty. I wonder if anyone has had
to solve this problem before. I am looking for either an approximate
analytical model, or a paper which might describe this scenario used in an
actual MEMS device. This is similar to a comb drive device except that the
fingers are not very stiff, and they start to bend towards each other.

The model consists of two parallel fingers around 100um long, 1 um thick and
2um wide, with a gap of 2um in between them. One cantilever beam is anchored
on the left side, and the other beam is anchored on the right side. When I
apply a voltage between the two cantilevers, I can see the tip of one beam
start to be pulled towards the anchor of the other beam.

Thanks,
Andrew O'Grady
PhD Candidate
Mechanical Engineering Columbia University
amo2109 at columbia.edu