Analysis of the nonlinear response of piezo-micromirrors with the harmonic balance method

In this work, we address the simulation and testing of MEMS micromirrors with hardening and softening behaviour excited with patches of piezoelectric materials. The forces exerted by the piezoelectric patches are modelled by means of the theory of ferroelectrics developed by Landau- Devonshire and are based on the experimentally measured polarisation hysteresis loops. The large rotations experienced by the mirrors also induce geometrical nonlinearities in the formulation up to cubic order. The solution of the proposed model is performed by discretising the device geometry using the Finite Element Method, and the resulting large system of coupled differential equations is solved by means of the Harmonic Balance Method. Numerical results were validated with experimental data collected on the devices

High-order direct parametrisation of invariant manifolds for model order reduction of finite element structures: application to generic forcing terms and parametrically excited systems

The direct parametrisation method for invariant manifolds is used for model order reduction of forced-damped mechanical structures subjected to geometric nonlinearities. Nonlinear mappings are introduced, allowing one to pass from the degrees of freedom of the finite-element model to the normal coordinates. Arbitrary orders of expansions are considered for the unknown mappings and the reduced dynamics, which are then solved sequentially through the homological equations for both autonomous and time-dependent terms. It is emphasised that the two problems share a similar structure, which can be used for an efficient implementation of the non-autonomous added terms. Special emphasis is also put on the new resonance conditions arising due to the presence of the external forcing frequencies, which allow predicting phenomena such as parametric excitation and isolas formation. The method is then applied to structures of academic and industrial interest. First, the large amplitude vibrations of a forced-damped cantilever beam are studied. This example highlights that high-order non-autonomous terms are compulsory to correctly estimate the maximum vibration amplitude experienced by the structure. The birth of isolated solutions is also illustrated on this example. The cantilever is then used to show how quadratic coupling creates conditions for the excitation of the parametric instability, and that this feature is correctly embedded in the reduction process. A shallow arch excited with multi-modal forcing is then studied to detail different forcing effects. Finally, the approach is validated on a structure of industrial relevance, i.e. a comb-driven micro-electro-mechanical resonator. The accuracy and computational performance reported suggest that the proposed methodology can accurately predict the nonlinear dynamic response of a large class of nonlinear vibratory systems

Model order reduction based on direct normal form: application to large finite element MEMS structures featuring internal resonance

Dimensionality reduction in mechanical vibratory systems poses challenges for distributed structures including geometric nonlinearities, mainly because of the lack of invariance of the linear subspaces. A reduction method based on direct normal form computation for large finite element (FE) models is here detailed. The main advantage resides in operating directly from the physical space, hence avoiding the computation of the complete eigenfunctions spectrum. Explicit solutions are given, thus enabling a fully non-intrusive version of the reduction method. The reduced dynamics is obtained from the normal form of the geometrically nonlinear mechanical problem, free of non-resonant monomials, and truncated to the selected master coordinates, thus making a direct link with the parametrisation of invariant manifolds. The method is fully expressed with a complex-valued formalism by detailing the homological equations in a systematic manner, and the link with real-valued expressions is established. A special emphasis is put on the treatment of second-order internal resonances and the specific case of a 1:2 resonance is made explicit. Finally, applications to large-scale models of micro-electro-mechanical structures featuring 1:2 and 1:3 resonances are reported, along with considerations on computational efficiency

High order direct parametrisation of invariant manifolds for model order reduction of finite element structures: application to large amplitude vibrations and uncovering of a folding point

This paper investigates model-order reduction methods for geometrically nonlinear structures. The parametrisation method of invariant manifolds is used and adapted to the case of mechanical systems expressed in the physical basis, so that the technique is directly applicable to problems discretised by the finite element method. Two nonlinear mappings, respectively related to displacement and velocity, are introduced, and the link between the two is made explicit at arbitrary order of expansion. The same development is performed on the reduced-order dynamics which is computed at generic order following the different styles of parametrisation. More specifically, three different styles are introduced and commented: the graph style, the complex normal form style and the real normal form style. These developments allow making better connections with earlier works using these parametrisation methods. The technique is then applied to three different examples. A clamped-clamped arch with increasing curvature is first used to show an example of a system with a softening behaviour turning to hardening at larger amplitudes, which can be replicated with a single mode reduction. Secondly, the case of a cantilever beam is investigated. It is shown that the invariant manifold of the first mode shows a folding point at large amplitudes which is not connected to an internal resonance. This exemplifies the failure of the graph style due to the folding point, whereas the normal form style is able to pass over the folding. Finally, A MEMS micromirror undergoing large rotations is used to show the importance of using high-order expansions on an industrial example

Combined effects of temperature and humidity on the mechanical properties of polyurethane foams

The effects of temperature and environmental moisture on the viscoelastic behavior of polyurethane foams were investigated both theoretically and experimentally. It was shown that the effect of the environmental parameters can be explained in terms of a variation of the free volume of the solid fraction of the foams, thus allowing the use of the superposition principle to predict their influence on the viscoelastic behavior of the materials. Dynamic mechanical analyses were performed to measure the dependence on frequency, temperature, and relative humidity of the complex modulus of two different polyurethane foams, differing in terms of their glass transition temperature. The time-temperature-humidity superposition principle was proved to be applicable for the tested materials. Next, the relaxation spectra and their dependence on the relative humidity were adopted to assess its effects on the large strain behavior of the foams

Reduced order modeling of nonlinear microstructures through Proper Orthogonal Decomposition

We apply the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method for the efficient simulation of several scenarios undergone by Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems, involving nonlinearites of geometric and electrostatic nature. The former type of nonlinearity, associated to the large displacements of the devices, leads to polynomial terms up to cubic order that are reduced through exact projection onto a low-dimensional subspace spanned by the Proper Orthogonal Modes (POMs). On the contrary, electrostatic nonlinearities are modeled resorting to precomputed manifolds in terms of the amplitudes of the electrically active POMs. We extensively test the reliability of the assumed linear trial space in challenging applications focusing on resonators, micromirrors and arches also displaying internal resonances. We discuss several options to generate the matrix of snapshots using both classical time marching schemes and more advanced Harmonic Balance (HB) approaches. Furthermore, we propose a comparison between the periodic orbits computed with POD and the invariant manifold approximated with Direct Normal Form approaches, further stressing the reliability of the technique and its remarkable predictive capabilities, e.g., in terms of estimation of the frequency response function of selected output quantities of interest