Dissipation manipulation via programmable holes and bumps: A complete model to evaluate and harness squeeze-film damping of resonators

Abstract

Squeeze-film damping, stemming from the drag effect generated when fluid flows in and out between two relatively moving surfaces, plays an important role in the energy dissipation of the resonator. Thorough understanding and harnessing of this dissipation could significantly enhance the performance of resonators and suggest new areas of practical application. However, existing research on this damping is limited to specific scenarios, such as circular or rectangular plates and fully perforated plates, which limits the tuning of damping and quality factors in broader applications. Here, we report on a novel dissipation tuning route via programmable holes and bumps, achieving large-scale and precise quality factor manipulation. Moreover, a complete model is established to successfully predict squeeze-film damping under various conditions, including diverse geometric shapes, complex boundary conditions, and different fluid environments. In addition, compared to existing models, the proposed model fully considers the impacts of microstructures (holes and bumps) with different geometries, numbers, and distributions on damping. The model is meticulously validated through systematic experiments, with deviations smaller than 10%. The experimental results also demonstrate that the tuning methodology achieves quality factor switching over more than five orders of magnitude for resonators with huge size differences (ranging from micrometers to centimeters). Our work serves as the underpinning for damping design and paves the way for harnessing the dynamic performance of resonators in fluid environments, which opens up applications in sensing and fundamental science.