On resonances in a weakly nonlinear microbeam due to an electric actuation

In this paper, the oscillations of an actuated, simply supported microbeam are studied for which it is assumed that the electric load is composed of a small DC polarization voltage and a small, harmonic AC voltage. Bending stiffness and mid-plane stretching are taken into account as well as small viscous or structural damping. No tensile axial force is assumed to be present. By using a multiple time-scales perturbation method, approximations of the solutions of the initial-boundary value problem for the microbeam equation are constructed. This analysis is performed without truncating the infinite series representation in advance as is usually done in the existing literature. It is shown in which cases truncation is allowed for this problem. Moreover, accurate and explicit approximations of the natural frequencies up to order ε³ of the actuated microbeam are also obtained. Intriguing and new modal vibrations are found when the frequency of the harmonic AC voltage is (near) half or twice a natural frequency of the microbeam, i.e., near a superharmonic or a subharmonic resonance.