Numerical Spring Models for Behavioral Simulation of MEMS Inertial Sensors

Design of springs is a very important step in the design process of inertial sensors. A procedure for computing the spring stiffness for any single-chain configuration of beams and a translator which converts beam-based schematic representation of inertial sensors to higher-level behavioral representation are implemented. Combining the spring stiffness computation with the translator, spring-mass behavioral models of inertial sensors are generated. The behavioral representation is used for rapid design-space exploration. Simulations of the higher-level behavioral schematics are 10 to 100 times faster than simulation of the atomic-elements based schematics and the results match to within 5%.