Nodal analysis of the in-plane thermal microactuator

The behavior of a thermal microactuator was conventionally simulated by FE or FD method in the past. A novel approach is proposed to simulate the behavior of the thermal microactuator with the nodal analysis method in this paper. The approach can build the macromodel of the thermal microactuator by odd continuation and Fourier transform based on the traditional nodal analysis method. Unlike the model order reduction method, this approach has apparent physical meaning which leads to a good understandability. This approach is then verified by the FE method and the results agree well with each other.