Preprocessing in ANSYS
Boundary conditions/loads Meshing Material/element properties
ANSYS
Electrostatics
Important in MEMS
To determine both capacitance and electrostatic forces Typically used to actuate devices such as comb drives and switches
Adaptive P-Elements
3D P-elements for electrostatics
SOLID128 Brick/Wedge elements SOLID127 Tetrahedral elements
Open domain modeled either using infinite boundary elements (INFIN110, and INFIN111) or Trefftz domain technology
Polynomial order of element increased automatically to satisfy convergence to a prescribed degree of accuracy
P-order may extend from 2 - 8
Supports
All electrostatics boundary conditions and loads node coupling and constraint equations Trefftz Domain & CMATRIX.
Electrostatic-Structural Coupling
Allows the actual electrostatic actuation of a MEMS device to be simulated Three methods for electrostatic -structural simulation
ESSOLV macro tool: a sequential coupled field macro TRANS126: Reduced order macro model element Manual sequential coupled: using the ANSYS APDL macro language
ESSOLV Macro
Solves coupled electrostatic-structural static analysis Macro automates a sequential solution process:
Electrostatic solution Structural solution (LDREAD of forces from electrostatics) Automatic mesh morphing of electrostatic mesh Convergence monitoring
Trans126 Element
Electromechanical transducer (EMT) macro element for electrostatic-structural simulation Characterized by capacitance vs. displacement curve Couples directly to:
FEA Solid models (solid elements, shell elements, beams) Other macro models FEA substructure models
Electrostatic field mesh morphs to accommodate the deformed structure Useful for obtaining pull-in voltages, deflections, fields, forces, etc.
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Resonator Example
Electrostatic analysis with EMT elements
Perform electrostatic analysis and capacitance extraction on one comb drive Table or curve fit results to define displacement vs. capacitance function, apply to TRANS126 Replace full model with TRANS126 elements
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Trefftz Method
May be used to connect multiple finite element electrostatic field domains
Eliminating the need to mesh the field regions between component regions
Trefftz Example
Example: charged, isolated sphere in free space
200 DOFs Within 3% of closed form solution
CMATRIX Macro
Automates computation of systems capacitance matrix
Extracts capacitance change as a function of device displacement
% Error (Capacitance)
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Applicable to any number of conductors/dielectric materials Derives ground and lumped matrices
Lump matrix provides the self and mutual capacitance between conductors.
Useful for extracting lumped capacitance for use in system level circuit-simulations
Mesh Refinement Parameter
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The results can be listed on screen, output to a file, or accessed by the ANSYS APDL macro language Lumped capacitance can be used in
System level simulation Input to ANSYS Trans126 EMT element
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Resonator Example
Comb drive resonator
Comb drives: 2 Trans126 elements (EMT1 & EMT2) Folded springs: 1 spring element (K1) Proof mass: 1 mass element (M1) Squeeze film damping: 1 damper element (D1)
Mechanical elements:
Springs, lumped mass, dampers
Circuit elements:
Resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, diodes, V/I sources
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Piezoelectric Analysis
MEMS piezoelectric transducers
Large deformations Typically more efficient actuator performance than both electrostatic and thermal actuators
Piezoelectric capabilities:
Geometric nonlinearities: large deflections/rotations Stress stiffening Pre-stressed modal and harmonic analyses Accurately accounts for changes in the electromechanical field in bending motion Direct input of the piezoelectric strain matrix [d] Calculation of the correction to the permittivity matrix [epsT][epsS]
Courtesy Waveprecision, a division of GSI Lumonics
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Pre-Stressed Examples
Piezoelectric prestressed modal analysis
First four modes
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Mirror Example
End view of a parallel plate capacitor/mirror assembly
Upper plate rotates Blue areas is the meshed fluidic domain
Pressure contour
Capabilities
Allows for large deformations Time transient problems: user-specified displacement & velocity time history for moving body Computes both lift and drag forces Incompressible and compressible flow Equivalent resistance and damping terms can be extracted as macro models
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Gas and liquid interface: continuum surface force (CSF) method to model the surface tension Surface tension material properties can be temperature dependent Available results
Contour plots of the fluid boundaries Pressure distributions within the fluid
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Perfectly Matched Layer/absorber (PML) for open boundaries Near and far field post-processing tools
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Composite Beams
Arbitrary beam cross sections with multiple materials
Multi-layered nature of surface micromachined MEMS devices
Eliminates the need to mesh the volume of a complex geometry for a structural analysis
Dramatically reduces model size and computation time
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Initial Stress
Residual stresses: different thermal properties of each material/layer
Sometimes used as a design feature
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Systems of Units
MKS units are not suitable for MEMS ANSYS provides two systems of units suitable for MEMS simulation:
uMKSV (micrometer, kilogram, second, volt, pico-ampere) uMVSfA (micrometer, volt, second, femto-ampere, gram)
Unit of length is in m
Material properties are scaled
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120 m
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