Thermoelastic Damping Limited Quality Factor Enhancement and Energy Dissipation Analysis of Rectangular Plate Resonators Using Nonclassical Elasticity Theory

Abstract

Among the different energy dissipation mechanisms, thermoelastic damping plays a vital role and needs to be alleviated in vibrating resonators to mitigate parameters by improving the thermoelastic damping limited quality factor, QTED. The maximum energy dissipation is also interrelated with the critical dimension $\left(h_c\right)$ of the plates, and by optimizing the dimensions, the peaking of energy dissipation can be diminished. As the size of the devices is scaled down, classical continuum theories become incompetent to explain the size-effect related mechanical nature at the micron and submicron levels, and, as a result, nonclassical continuum theories have been pioneered with the inception of internal length scale parameters. In this work, an analysis of isotropic rectangular microplates based on the Kirchhoff model and a higher order theory like Modified Couple Stress Theory is utilized to study size-dependent thermoelastic damping and its impact on the quality factor and critical dimensions. The Hamilton principle is adapted to derive the governing equations of motion, and the coupled heat conduction equation is employed to formulate the thermoelastic damping limited quality factor of the plates. Five different structural materials (PolySi, diamond, Si, GaAs, and SiC) are used for optimizing QTED and hc, which depends on two material performance index parameters: the thermoelastic damping index (TDI) and the material thermal diffusion length, $l_T$ . According to this work, the maximum QTED is attained for PolySi with the lowest TDI, and hcmax is obtained for Si with the maximum $l_T$ . The impacts of the dimensionless length-scale parameters (l/h), vibration modes, and boundary conditions (clamped-clamped and simply supported) on QTED and hc are also investigated. From the current analysis, QTED can be further enhanced by selecting higher vibration modes and clamped-clamped boundary conditions. QTED can be maximized by fixing the internal length scale parameter (l) and making the thickness of the beam equal to l. The analytical study is numerically simulated by using MATLAB 2015 software. Prior knowledge of QTED and hc will help designers to produce high-performance and low-loss resonators for the futuristic technological applications.