A study on thermo-mechanical behavior of MCD through bulge test analysis

Abstract

The Micro circular diaphragm (MCD) is the mechanical actuator part used in the micro electro-mechanical sensors (MEMS) that combine electrical and mechanical components. These actuators are working under harsh mechanical and thermal conditions, so it is very important to study the mechanical and thermal behaviors of these actuators, in order to do with its function successfully. The objective of this paper is to determine the thermo-mechanical behavior of MCD by developing the traditional bulge test technique to achieve the aims of this work. The specimen is first pre-stressed to ensure that is no initial deflection before applied the loads on diaphragm and then clamped between two plates, a differential pressure (P) and temperature (Tb) is leading to a deformation of the MCD. Analytical formulation of developed bulge test technique for MCD thermo-mechanical characterization was established with taking in-to account effect of the residual strength from pre-stressed loading. These makes the plane-strain bulge test ideal for studying the mechanical and thermal behavior of diaphragm in both the elastic and plastic regimes. The differential specimen thickness due to bulge effect to describe the mechanical behavior, and the temperature effect on the MCD material properties to study the thermal behavior under deformation were discussed. A finite element model (FEM) can be extended to apply for investigating the reliability of the proposed bulge test of MCD and compare between the FEM results and another one from analytical calculus. The results show that, the good convergence between the finite element model and analytical model.