Transient analysis of nonlinear Euler–Bernoulli micro-beam with thermoelastic damping, via nonlinear normal modes

In this paper an Euler–Bernoulli model has been used for vibration analysis of micro-beams with large transverse deflection. Thermoelastic damping is considered to be the dominant damping mechanism and introduced as imaginary stiffness into the equation of motion by evaluating temperature profile as a function of lateral displacement. The obtained equation of motion is analyzed in the case of pure single mode motion by two methods; nonlinear normal mode theory and the Galerkin procedure. In contrast with the Galerkin procedure, nonlinear normal mode analysis introduces a nonconventional nonlinear damping term in modal oscillator which results in strong damping in case of large amplitude vibrations. Evaluated modal oscillators are solved using harmonic balance method and tackling damping terms introduced as an imaginary stiffness is discussed. It has been shown also that nonlinear modal analysis of micro-beam with thermoelastic damping predicts parameters such as inverse quality factor, and frequency shift, to have an extrema point at certain amplitude during transient response due to the mentioned nonlinear damping term; and the effect of system׳s characteristics on this critical amplitude has also been discussed.