Pull-in instability limits the travel distance of elastically suspended parallel-plate and transverse comb-drive electrostatic microactuators to approximately 1/3 of the undeflected gap distance. This instability is due to the electrostatic force increasing more rapidly than the spring force. It is desirable to increase the controllable travel range of an electrostatic microactuator beyond this 1/3 limit for applications that require high fill factors. Several methods have been suggested to extend the controllable travel range by using a multiphase piecewise linear mechanical flexure, by adding additional circuitry, by incorporating an on-board folded capacitor on the device. A control law was also proposed but no experimetal results on fabricated devices were reported.

This project involved the design of a non-linear control strategy to increase the pull-in range and implementation of it on a fabricated micro-actuator. Detailed information on this project can be found in this publication which includes experimental results using a non-linear model inversion technique to extend the travel range to 3.7 um. without pull-in over a 5.4 um gap between the comb fingers. This approach of extending the travel range does not require additional hardware and device area and does not futher complicate the fabrication processes.

The first thing to handle in machine design, is the design of mechanisms for a given motion. In this study, an interactive computer software package (Quad-Link) for the solution of the classical mechanisms design problems such as motion, path and function generation, is explained. After taking the necessary design inputs from the user, the program plots the Burmester (center and circle point) curves. The type, dimensions and joint coordinates of the four-bar mechanism solutions due to the given prescriptions are determined and displayed. Any solution can be analyzed for the kinematic entities including velocity, acceleration and transmission angle and animated by using the analysis and animation options of the program. This program is capable of handling three and four multiply seperated position cases.

Web-based education has been rapidly increasing in the world in recent years. This kind of education can be accomplished not only by enabling the instructor to contact the student remotely over the internet in an interactive manner, but also by supplying the course material which is prepared by using computer tools, as a supporting material for the course which is given by the instructor in the student's current institution. In this way both the education can be broad in content and it will be possible to cover the topics which cannot be covered in regular courses. As motion is the most important aspect of the mechanisms study, it's hard to give this motion concept in classical blackboard education and the usage of expensive and a few number of models is in general not sufficient.. The textbooks are capable of explaining the topics to the students only by means of pictures and texts, hence it has a limitted effect on the students. In this work, a web-based package prepared for the mechanisms course is explained.