Strategies of modelling and simulation of microsystems with electromechanical energy conversion

It is evident from the recent development of microsystem technology that usual simulation methods and tools can hardly meet the requirements of a modern design process. Although in most cases single subsystems can be described and simulated, their interactions cannot yet be included in the simulation process. This can be attributed to: (i) the coupling of different physical domains due to energy conversion; (ii) the complexity and heterogeneity of microsystems; and (iii) the use of extremely different design methods and tools for separate electric and non-electric subcomponents of microsystems. This paper describes and discusses several strategies of modelling and simulation of such complex and heterogeneous microsystems, which allow a coupled simulation of such systems with a reasonable accuracy of the computational results. The strategies are based exclusively on commercial simulation software. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.