Physically-based damping model for highly perforated and largely deflected torsional actuators

We propose a mixed level simulation scheme for squeeze film damping (SQFD) effects in microdevices, which enables the inclusion of damping effects in system level models of entire microsystems in a natural, physical-based, and flexible way. Our approach allows also for complex geometries and coupling to other energy and signal domains. Applying the methodology to torsional structures yields results which are in excellent agreement with FEM simulations, based on the 3D Navier-Stokes equations, thus demonstrating the quality of our approach. For highly perforated structures the number of holes must be reduced by merging of adjacent holes. With a view to deriving scaling laws for this merging procedure, we carried out systematic FEM simulations.