Electromechanical Behavior of Microbeams with Piezoelectric and Electrostatic Actuation

In this paper, a novel micro cantilever MEM switch is considered with piezoelectric layers that bounded to the microbeam. This developed model is actuated by applied voltage to the electrostatic electrodes and piezoelectric layers. Respect to the applying of the actuation voltage to the piezoelectric layers and electrostatic electrodes, three methods can be used to actuate this switch. The governing equation is derived and in order to linearize the nonlinear governing equations; step by step linearization method is used and generalized differential quadrature is applied to solve the linear systems of equations. The obtained results for a simple micro cantilever MEM switch are in good agreement with other simulation results to demonstrate the feasibility of proposed numerical methods. Respect to any of three actuation methods, the numerical results show that the proposed model can be actuated electrostatically and piezoelectrically, which of course the switching voltage is less than the original model.