Finite Element Sensitivity Studies of Robustness in Micro-Scale Piezoelectric Technologies

Sensitivity analysis is a branch of numerical analysis which aims to quantify the effects that variability in the parameters of a numerical model have on the model output. A finite element based sensitivity analysis formulation for piezoelectric media is developed here and applied to the model the operation and sensitivity characteristics of a piezoelectric based distributed mode actuator (DMA). The work acts as a framework for modelling uncertainty in micro-scale multi-domain engineering technologies.