Analytical Approximate Solution for Nonlinear Behavior of Cantilever FGM MEMS Beam with Thermal and Size Dependency

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the nonlinear static behavior of a cantilever functionally graded material (FGM) microbeam with the influence of thermal stress and the intermolecular force. A significant extension of the recent works of constructing analytical approximate solutions to a clamped-clamped FGM MEMS/NEMS beam is formed in the paper. Based on the modified couple stress theory and an internal material length-scale parameter, the governing equations account for the microbeam size dependency. Note that the thermal force and moment in boundary condition make procedure of solution more complex. The combinations of Galerkin method and the assumption of deflection function are used to establish analytical approximate solutions which have brief expressions. Good agreements of approximate results are found for large range of free-end deflection of cantilever FGM microbeam through comparing them with numerical solutions and other existing results. The influence of various physical parameters, such as the material attributes (Young modulus, Poisson ratio, etc.), the electrostatic gap, and microsize of the beam on mechanical behavior, or Pull-In voltage of electrostatically actuated microbeams, could also be investigated with these analytical expressions.