An Entropy Based Analytical Model for Thermoelastic Damping in Micromechanical Resonators

Abstract

In this paper, we present an analytical model for thermoelastic damping (TED) in micromechanical resonators, which is based on entropy generation, a thermodynamic parameter measuring the irreversibility in heat conduction. The temperature field of thin beam with small vibration is obtained by solving governing equations of linear thermoelasticity. The analytical solution is derived from the entropy generation equation. This method of entropy generation can provide an accurate estimation of the quality factor in flexural resonators. The results are compared with Zener’s approximation and LR (Lifshitz and Roukes) method. It is shown that the analytical model described in this paper is valid to estimate the quality factor due to thermoelastic damping.