CFD analysis of viscous losses in complex microsystems

This work investigates the possibility to apply general purpose CFD software in order to simulate viscous damping forces in microsystems with arbitrary complex geometries. The paper summarizes various aspects that have to be considered modeling flows and viscous interaction on micrometer scales. Based on the software CFD-ACE+, a general simulation procedure is developed and compared to analytical damping models as well as to measured data. Both comparisons show excellent agreements and finally confirm the presented approach.