Free vibration of microscaled Timoshenko beams

In this paper, a comprehensive model is presented to investigate the influence of surface elasticity and residual surface tension on the natural frequency of flexural vibrations of microbeams in the presence of rotary inertia and shear deformation effects. An explicit solution is derived for the natural oscillations of microscaled Timoshenko beams considering surface effects. The analytical results are illustrated with numerical examples in which two types of microbeams are configured based on Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theory considering surface elasticity and residual surface tension. The natural frequencies of vibration are calculated for selected beam length on the order of nanometer to microns and the results are compared with those corresponding to the classical beam models, emphasizing the differences occurring when the surface effects are significant. It is found that the nondimensional natural frequency of the vibration of micro and nanoscaled beams is size dependent and for limiting case in which the beam length increases, the results tends to the results obtained by classical beam models. This study might be helpful for the design of high-precision measurement devices such as chemical and biological sensors. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3246143]