Heat Transfer Model and Critical Driving Frequency of Electrothermal V-Shaped Actuators

Abstract

This paper presents a finite difference heat transfer model on micro beam of electrothermal V-shaped micro actuator and a calculation method of conversion parameters in the dynamic equation. The relation between maximum displacement and a driving frequency is investigated in order to determine critical frequency ensuring the working stability of the actuator. The theoretical model is validated by finite element method (FEM) in ANSYS. The comparison of displacement results at various driving voltages between computation and simulation confirmed the high accuracy of this model. While applying the model for specific V-shaped actuator with selected dimensions, stability of the actuator can be obtained with the range of driving frequency is lower than 100 Hz. While the displacement amplitude decreases (with acceptable deviation of 5%), the critical frequencies change from 171 Hz to 207 Hz, and to be linear proportion to the square wave driving voltage with ranging from 10 V to 30 V, respectively.