Computational Methods in Engineering

: In this paper, a nonlinear model of clamped-clamped microbeam actuated by electrostatic load with stretching and thermoelastic effects is presented. Free vibration frequency is calculated by discretization based on DQ method. Frequency is a complex value due to the thermoelastic effect that dissipates the energy. By separating the real and imaginary parts of frequency, quality factor of thermoelastic damping is calculated. Both stretching and thermoelastic effects are validated against the results of the reference papers. The variations of thermoelastic damping versus elasticity modulus, coefficient of thermal expansion and geometrical parameters such as thickness, gap distance, and length are investigated and these results are compared in the linear and nonlinear models for high values of voltage. Also, this paper shows that since for high values of electrostatic voltage the linear model reveals a large error for calculating the thermoelastic damping, the nonlinear model should be used for this purpose.