Dynamical behaviour of electrically actuated microcantilevers

The current paper aims at investigating the nonlinear dynamical behaviour of an electrically actuated microcantilever. The microcantilever is excited by a combination of AC and DC voltages. The nonlinear equation of motion of the microcantilever is obtained by means of force and moment balances. A high-dimensional Galerkin scheme is then applied to reduce the equation of motion to a discrete model. A numerical technique, based on the pseudo-arclength continuation method, is used to solve the discretized model. The electrostatic deflection of the microcantilever and static pull-in instabilities, due to the DC voltage, are analyzed by plotting the so-called DC voltage-deflection curves. At the simultaneous presence of the DC and AC voltages, the nonlinear dynamical behaviour of the microcantilever is analyzed by plotting frequency-response and force-response curves.