Electrostatic Simulation using XFEM for Conductor and Dielectric Interfaces

ManyMicro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (e.g. RF-switches, micro-resonators and micro-rotors) involve
mechanical structures moving in an electrostatic field. For this type of problems, it is required to
evaluate accurately the electrostatic forces acting on the devices. Extended Finite Element (X-FEM)
approaches can easily handle moving boundaries and interfaces in the electrostatic domain and seem
therefore very suitable to model Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems. In this study we investigate
different X-FEM techniques to solve the electrostatic problem when the electrostatic domain is
bounded by a conducting material. Preliminary studies in one-dimension have shown that one can
obtain good results in the computation of electrostatic potential using X-FEM. In this paper the
extension of these preliminary studies to 2D problem is presented. In particular a new type of
enrichment functions is proposed in order to treat accurately Dirichlet boundary conditions on the
interface.