Thermoelectric macromodeling for thermal microactuator using trajectory piecewise-linear model order reduction

Using the trajectory piecewise-linear (TPWL) method, a nonlinear thermoelectric macromodeling technique for the thermal microactuator is presented. First, considering the coupling effects between thermal field and electric field as well as the temperature-dependence of material properties, a 3D nonlinear thermoelectric model for the thermal microactuator is established. And the finite element method (FEM) is used to discrete the spatial derivatives in the thermoelectric model. Second, a new linearization point selection method, which is based on a global maximum error controller, is employed to select the linearization points. Finally, the thermoelectric macromodel for the thermal microactuator is obtained by using the TPWL method. The accuracy, efficiency and expandability of the macromodel are investigated by using the example of a thermomechanical in-plane microactuator. Compared with the simulation results of the nonlinear full-meshed model, the relative error of the macromodel can reach to 0.036%. Moreover, the simulation of the macromodel is at least 100 times faster than the nonlinear full-meshed model.