High-Level Fault Modeling in Surface-Micromachined MEMS

Abstract

MEMS structures rendered defective by particles are modeled at the schematic-level using existing models of fault-free MEMS primitives within the nodal simulator NODAS. We have compared the results of schematic-level fault simulations with low-level finite element analysis (FEA) and demonstrated the efficacy of such an approach. Analysis shows that NODAS achieves a 60X speedup over FEA with little accuracy loss in modeling defects caused by particles.