The problem of thin elastic films bonded on an elastic orthotropic substrate under thermal load is investigated in this work. Differently from past studies on the same topic, the effects induced by anisotropic behavior of the elastic substrate will be taken into account. Particular attention will also be paid to the determination of the displacement and stress fields induced by thermal loading. In particular, it is assumed that the thin films are deposed on the substrate at high temperature, and then the mismatch occurring during the cooling process, due to the difference between the thermal expansion coefficients of the two materials, is responsible for the permanent deformation assumed by the system. This phenomenon can be exploited for realizing a crystalline undulator. To this aim, the permanent deformation must be optimized in order to encourage the channeling phenomenon. By imposing equilibrium conditions and perfect adhesion between the film and the substrate, a singular integral equation is derived. A closed-form solution is achieved by expanding the interfacial shear stress fields in Chebyshev series. The unknown coefficients in the series expansion are then determined by transforming the integral equation into an infinite algebraic system.
An analytic solution for the steady-state temperature distribution in an infinite conductive medium containing an insulated toroidal inhomogeneity and subjected to remotely applied uniform heat flux is obtained. The temperature flux on the torus surface is then determined as a function of torus parameters. This result is used to calculate the resistivity contribution tensor for the toroidal inhomogeneity required to evaluate the effective conductive properties of a material containing multiple inhomogeneities of this shape.
MEMS-NEMS applications extensively use micro-nano cantilever structures as actuation system, thanks to their intrinsically simple end efficient configuration. Under the action of an electrostatic actuation voltage the cantilever deflects, until it reaches the maximum value of the electrostatic actuation voltage, namely the pull-in voltage. This limits its operating point and is a critical issue for the switching of the actuator. The present work aims to experimentally measure the variation of the pull-in voltage and the tip deflection for different geometrical parameters of an electrostatically actuated cantilever. First, by relying on a nonlinear differential model from the literature, we designed and built a macro-scale cantilever switch, which can be simply adapted to different configurations. Second, we experimentally investigated the effect of the free length of the suspended electrode, and of the gap from the ground, on the pull-in response. The experimental results always showed a close agreement with the analytical predictions, with a maximum relative error lower that 10% for the pull-in voltage, and a relative difference lower than 18% for the pull-in deflection.