Experimental characterization of nonlinear static and dynamic behaviors of circular capacitive microplates with initial deflection

In this paper, the effects of initial deflection on the static and dynamic behaviors of circular capacitive transducers are experimentally investigated. The obtained results are in good agreement with numerical simulations. It is shown that the initial deflection has a major impact on the static response of the resonator by shifting the pull-in voltage, and on its dynamic response by increasing the resonance frequency and modifying the bifurcation topology from softening to hardening behavior. Moreover, the dynamic behavior of the microplate may display nonlinear periodic and quasiperiodic responses due to geometric and electrostatic nonlinearities.