The lifetime of micro electro–thermo–mechanical actuators with complex electro–thermo–mechanical coupling mechanisms can be decreased significantly due to unexpected failure events. Even more serious is the fact that various failures are tightly coupled due to micro-size and multi-physics effects. Interrelation between performance and potential failures should be established to predict reliabil...

Analysis of the thermomechanical interactions of fusion blanket materials and physical elements, particularly those involving particle bed design concepts, have been performed. The results show that the stress caused by the high thermal expansion of the blanket particle bed material is not excessive enough to be of concern for the structural material. However, its magnitude could lead to cerami...

The present study investigates Joule heating in piezoresistive microcantilever sensors. Joule heating and thermal deflections are a major source of noise in such sensors. This work uses analytical and numerical techniques to characterise the Joule heating in 4-layer piezoresistive microcantilevers made of silicon and silicon dioxide substrates but with the same U-shaped silicon piezoresistor. A...

An interferometric method is implemented in order to accurately assess the thermal fluctuations of a micro-cantilever sensor in liquid environments. The power spectrum density (PSD) of thermal fluctuations together with Sader's model of the cantilever allow for the indirect measurement of the liquid viscosity with good accuracy. The good quality of the deflection signal and the characteristic l...

In this letter, we characterize the internal dissipation of coated micro-cantilevers through their mechanical thermal noise. Using a home-made interferometric setup, we achieve a resolution down to 10 m/ √ Hz in the measurement of their deflection. With the use of the fluctuation dissipation theorem and of the Kramers-Kronig relations, we rebuilt the full mechanical response function from the m...

We have simulated by Monte Carlo method the thermal behaviour of a small (N=13 particles) cluster described by a Heisenberg model including nearest neighbours ferromagnetic interactions and radial surface anisotropy, in an applied magnetic field. We have studied three different lattice structures: hexagonal close packed, face centered cubic and icosahedral. We show that the zero field thermal b...