Static behaviour prediction of microelectrostatic actuators by discrete geometric approaches

The analysis of a microelectrostatic actuator is presented, formulated by means of the so-called Discrete Geometric Approach applied to the solution of the electrostatic-elastostatic coupled problem. Numerical results computed by means of the proposed approach are compared to those obtained by assessed approaches like the finite-element method (FEM) (for both the structural and the electric domains) and FEM+boundary element method (BEM) (FEM for the structure, BEM for the electric domain). A preliminary experimental validation is finally added to validate the proposed approach. It shows a good agreement among the numerical and experimental results, even in case of the microscale of the tested structures.