Multiphysics modeling of axispherical MEMS

In recent times, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have received significant attention. MEMS are lightweight, ultra small devices, which are widely used for integrated sensor applications, such as acceleration sensors for airbags and actuators for micro air vehicles (MAVs). Spherical MEMS devices are perceived to be important in a number of applications. They are unidirectional, an attractive feature when the to-be-sensed quantity is of unknown location in an effectively infinite field. Spherical MEMS are, for example, used on a very large scale in active and passive sonar arrays. A new finite element is presented for the modeling of spherically symmetric geometries. We show that this line element can be extended to model various multiphysics phenomena. The spherical element has the additional virtue of being computationally efficient, when compared with its solid and axicylindrical cousins.