Modelling of damping forces occuring in simple MEMS systems

A certain damping force occurs in the micro-mechanical systems referred as MEMS. At the design stage of such systems, these forces must be accurately estimated. As shown in this work, in all systems operating at low frequencies, most important force is the one associated with the flotation of air film from the volume between two parallel operating movable MEMS plates. This force can be accurately estimated by analytical methods known from the literature. The paper presents analytical solutions that are frequently used in practice for simple plates. Also some simple simulations, using all described analytical solutions compared with the results of specialized program called Comsol Multyphysics, are shown. Presented research demonstrate the effectiveness of numerical software.[b]Keywords[/b]: MEMS, damping forces, Reynolds equation, modelling, simulatio