Surface and nonlocal effects on response of linear and nonlinear NEMS devices

Nonlocal and surface effects become important for nanoscale devices. To model these effects on frequency response of linear and nonlinear nanobeam subjected to electrostatic excitation, we use Eringen’s nonlocal elastic theory and surface elastic theory proposed by Gurtin and Murdoch to modify the governing equation. Subsequently, we apply Galerkin’s method with exact mode shape including nonlocal and surface effects to get static and dynamic modal equations. After validating the procedure with the available results, we analyze the variation of pull-in voltage and frequency resonance by varying surface and nonlocal parameters. To do frequency analysis of nonlinear system, we solve nonlinear dynamic equation using the method of multiple scale. We found that the frequency response of nonlinear system reduces for fixed excitation as the surface and nonlocal effects increase. Also, we found that the nature of nonlinearity can be tuned from hardening to softening by increasing the nonlocal effects.