Thermo-elastic damping in a functionally graded piezoelectric micro-resonator

Abstract

The present study investigates the thermo-elastic damping (TED) of transversal vibration in a functionally graded piezoelectric (FGP) micro-beam resonator. The model is a functionally graded silicon-piezoelectric fully clamped micro beam exposed to a DC piezoelectric tuning voltage. The object is to propose a novel FGP MEM system, with a controllable thermo-elastic damping. It is shown that the functionality of the material distribution not only reduces the TED ratio, but also enables tuning the resonance frequency of the resonator due to the piezoelectric actuation. The effects of portion of piezoelectric material, geometrical dimensions, the ambient temperature and tuning DC voltage, on the quality factor of the flexural vibrations of the structure is analyzed through solving the thermo elastically coupled dynamic equations of the motion.