Steady-state, nonlinear analysis of large arrays of electrically actuated micromembranes vibrating in a fluid

This paper describes a robust and efficient method to obtain the steady-state, nonlinear behaviour of large arrays of electrically actuated micromembranes vibrating in a fluid. The nonlinear electromechanical behaviour and the multiple vibration harmonics it creates are fully taken into account thanks to a multiharmonic finite element formulation, generated automatically using symbolic calculation. A domain decomposition method allows to consider large arrays of micromembranes by efficiently distributing the computational cost on parallel computers. Two- and three-dimensional examples highlight the main properties of the proposed method.