Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to study the combined effect of hygro and thermo-mechanical behavior on a plastic encapsulated micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) package during the reflow process after exposed to a humid environment for a prolonged time. Plastic encapsulated electronic packages absorb moisture when they are subjected to humid ambient conditions. Design/methodology/...

Due to higher ecological awareness and more stringent environmental laws the necessity of lowering the energy consumption of manufacturing plants rises. Therefore the possibility to optimize a planned production hall becomes more and more important. The research project INFO, a project of the Vienna University of Technology in cooperation with industry partners and supported by the FFG, the Aus...

Employing the Ginzburg-Landau phase-field theory, a new coupled dynamic thermo-mechanical 3D model has been proposed for modeling the cubic-to-tetragonal martensitic transformations in shape memory alloy (SMA) nanostructures. The stress-induced phase transformations and thermo-mechanical behavior of nanostructured SMAs have been investigated. The mechanical and thermal hysteresis phenomena, loc...

In this work, the problem of a curved functionally graded piezoelectric (FGP) actuator with sandwich structure under electrical and thermal loads is investigated. The middle layer in the sandwich structure is functionally graded with the piezoelectric coefficient g31 varying continuously along the radial direction of the curved actuator. Based on the theory of linear piezoelectricity, analytica...

In a healthy heart, the mechano-electric feedback (MEF) process acts as an intrinsic regulatory mechanism of the myocardium which allows the normal cardiac contraction by damping mechanical perturbations in order to generate a new healthy electromechanical situation. However, under certain conditions, the MEF can be a generator of dramatic arrhythmias by inducing local electrical depolarization...

Electro-thermal actuation mechanism continues to attract attention of MEMS designers as a reliable method of delivering high displacements and high actuation forces [1]. The main purpose of this work is to conduct a coupled multi-physics FEA of a micro-machined electro-thermomechanical actuator (μETMA) in order to determine a nature of a common failure mode, suggest a better fabrication process...

This paper presents a design optimization method based on theoretical analysis and numerical calculations, using a commercial multi-physics solver (e.g., ANSYS and ESI CFD-ACE+), for a 3D continuous model, to analyze the bending characteristics of an electrically heated bimorph microcantilever. The results from the theoretical calculation and numerical analysis are compared with those measured ...

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