Comb Drive
Rectangular comb drives are used in a variety of applications in MEMS systems. This is a model of an electrostatically-actuated comb drive used to open and close a pair of microtweezers.Because electrostatic forces attract the combs to each other, any geometric change has an impact on the electric field between them. To account for this effect, the model uses the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method implemented in COMSOL Multiphysics’ Moving Mesh application mode. This application mode automatically keeps track of the movements and transforms the appropriate equations between the fixed (reference) and moving frames.
In this model the displacements are relatively large and support for large deformations in the Plane Stress application mode is used. The electrostatics application mode’s Maxwell surface stress tensor boundary variables are used for defining the electrostatic force.
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The manufactured comb drive and a COMSOL Multiphysics model of it. |
Engineering Fields
- Multiphysics
- Piezoelectric Components
- Actuators
Application Areas
- MEMS