Near-Contact Gas Damping and Dynamic Response of High-g MEMS Accelerometer Beams
Abstract
This paper introduces and experimentally validates a new model for near-contact gas damping of microbeams. The model is formulated based on numerical simulations of rarefied gas dynamics using the Boltzmann Ellipsoidal Statistical Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (ES-BGK) equation. The result is compared with existing models by simulating the motion of beams under high-g acceleration. To experimentally validate the damping models, single crystal silicon MEMS g-switches with cantilever microbeams of various lengths were utilized. The experimental measurements of beam dynamics under peak accelerations of approximately 50,000 g and acceleration ramp rates from 600 to 3,000 g/mu s are compared with simulations. Additionally, the damping coefficients are extracted from existing vibrational mode data, and the resulting values are compared to the various models. The new near-contact model was found to predict contact and release times within a root-mean-square deviation from experiment below 9 mu s (
Keywords
Gas damping; acceleration measurement; modeling; beams; MODELS; PERFORMANCE
DOI
10.1109/JMEMS.2013.2269692
Date of this Version
10-2013
Recommended Citation
Parkos, Devon; Raghunathan, Nithin; Venkattraman, Ayyaswamy; Sanborn, Brett; Chen, Weinong; Peroulis, Dimitrios; and Alexeenko, Alina A., "Near-Contact Gas Damping and Dynamic Response of High-g MEMS Accelerometer Beams" (2013). Birck and NCN Publications. Paper 1469.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JMEMS.2013.2269692