A simple numerical methodology for thermal-fluid-structural interactions of air damping over heated micro-cantilevers

This paper proposes a simple methodology to analyse numerically the effects of air damping on the oscillatory motion of heated micro-cantilevers. The proposed methodology is fully solved by the fluid solver, because the solid domain is embedded into a subroutine executed at the end of each time step. The methodology is first validated against numerical and experimental data yielding acceptable results. Next, it is applied to predict the quality factor of a micro-cantilever heated by an electric resistance inserted inside it. The transferred heat flow and the evolution in time of temperature are analysed and the quality factors of both heated and isothermal micro-cantilevers are compared.