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Results of molecular-mechanics simulations of axial and torsional deformations of a single wall carbon nanotube are used to find Young's modulus, the shear modulus, and the wall thickness of an equivalent continuum tube made of a linear elastic isotropic material. These values are used to compare the response of the continuum tube in bending and buckling with that obtained from the molecular mechanics simulations. It is found that the strain energy of bending deformation computed from the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory matches well with that obtained from the molecular-mechanics simulations. The molecular-mechanics predictions of the critical strains for axial buckling and shell wall buckling do not match well with those derived from the Euler buckling formula and the Donnell shell theory.

A wide range of microelectromechanical systems (MEMSs) and devices are actuated using electrostatic forces. Multiphysics modeling is required, since coupling among different fields such as solid and fluid mechanics, thermomechanics and electromagnetism is involved. This work presents an overview of models for electrostatically actuated MEMSs. Three-dimensional nonlinear formulations for the coupled electromechanical fluid-structure interaction problem are outlined. Simplified reduced-order models are illustrated along with assumptions that define their range of applicability. Theoretical, numerical and experimental works are classified according to the mechanical model used in the analysis.

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Toupin's version of Saint-Venant's principle in linear elasticity is generalized to the case of linear piezoelectricity. That is, it is shown that, for a straight prismatic bar made of a linear piezoelectric material and loaded by a self-equilibrated system at one end only, the internal energy stored in the portion of the bar which is beyond a distance s from the loaded end decreases exponentially with the distance s.

We consider the von Kármán nonlinearity and the Casimir force to develop reduced-order models for prestressed clamped rectangular and circular electrostatically actuated microplates. Reduced-order models are derived by taking flexural vibration mode shapes as basis functions for the transverse displacement. The in-plane displacement vector is decomposed as the sum of displacements for irrotational and isochoric waves in a two-dimensional medium. Each of these two displacement vector fields satisfies an eigenvalue problem analogous to that of transverse vibrations of a linear elastic membrane. Basis functions for the transverse and the in-plane displacements are related by using the nonlinear equation governing the plate in-plane motion. The reduced-order model is derived from the equation yielding the transverse deflection of a point. For static deformations of a plate, the pull-in parameters are found by using the displacement iteration pull-in extraction method. Reduced-order models are also used to study linear vibrations about a predeformed configuration. It is found that 9 basis functions for a rectangular plate give a converged solution, while 3 basis functions give pull-in parameters with an error of at most 4%. For a circular plate, 3 basis functions give a converged solution while the pull-in parameters computed with 2 basis functions have an error of at most 3%. The value of the Casimir force at the onset of pull-in instability is used to compute device size that can be safely fabricated.

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