In this report, the motion of two linked electrostatic comb drives and the corresponding displacement of the tip of a centrally mounted pointer is examined. Based on the Bulirsch-Stoer numerical method with modified midpoint steps and rational function extrapolation, a FORTRAN program was developed to numerically solve the governing equations for the system. The analysis of the system was performed with comb drive forcing functions driven at the two calculated resonant frequencies of the system and for several phase shifts.
From this study, it was predicted that at a resonant frequency of 13,416 Hz, the motion of the pointer tip would be predominantly in the longitudinal direction, while at a resonant frequency of 18,216 Hz the motion would be predominantly lateral. These predicted motions were confmed during operation of a working model of the mechanism, but thecalculated resonant frequencies and displacements were found to be over-estimated due to modeling simplifications.