Search

This paper reviews fundamental ways to calculate the forces between charged electrodes as they appear, e.g., in electrostatic drives. In particular the consideration of the force acting on the surface charge layers on the electrodes, the principle of virtual displacement, and the Maxwell stress tensor are considered for two examples: a parallel plate capacitor and an electrostatic comb drive featuring interdigitated electrodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The approximate treatment of a short dipole as receiving antenna using electrostatic considerations is presented. By simple approximations, it can be found that the effective height, connecting the open circuit voltage with the incident electric field, is approximately half the dipole’s length. This result is commonly obtained using the reciprocity theorem which requires the knowledge of the current distribution in the transmission case and which is not physically intuitive to undergraduate students. We illustrate our considerations by means of numerical results and a simple numerical method, which can be readily implemented by undergraduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]