A new buckling model for thin-walled micro-beams based on modified gradient elasticity: Coupling effect and size effect

Abstract

More and more thin-walled micro-beams, including the I-section thin-walled micro-beams, are applied in MEMS. The buckling of a thin-walled micro-beam exhibits some different phenomena from that of a large scale thin-walled beam, such as the size effect, and the coupling effects caused by strain gradient. To investigate the influence of the coupling effects and size effect on the buckling of thin-walled micro-beams, a new buckling model is proposed. Based on modified gradient elasticity (MGE), the governing equations and boundary conditions of the new model are derived from the variational principle. The governing equations and boundary conditions can be simplified to the classical Vlasov's theory, the MGE Bernoulli–Euler beam model, MGE Bernoulli–Euler beam model considering bi-directional flexure respectively. Solved by the feature expansion method, the size effects of the thin-walled micro-beam can be captured by the new model, that is the buckling load increases with internal length scales. Besides the classical flexural–torsional coupling effect, two new coupling effects, such as the higher-order flexure–flexure coupling and the higher-order flexural–torsional coupling, are also captured by the new model. These two new high-order coupling effects of the new model reduce the critical buckling load of thin-walled micro-beams. The higher-order flexural–flexural coupling effect is far greater than the other two coupling effects, and the higher-order flexural–flexural coupling effect is on the same order of magnitude as the effect of MGE (size effect), with the former being negative and the latter positive. The size effect and higher-order coupling effect cannot be ignored and need to be considered carefully for the buckling of thin-walled micro-beams.