Coupled 3D thermo-electro-mechanical simulations of microactuators

We report 3D simulations of microactuators based on the solution of consistently coupled thermo-electro-mechanical equations. The necessary solution algorithms are implemented into the MEMS simulation environment SOLIDIS and allow efficient optimization studies of geometrically complex MEMS devices. Key issues are the solution of coupled equation systems using zone partitioning, adaptive mesh refinement, mesh updating using geometrical algorithms and field smoothing for the extraction of accurate electrostatic forces.