... experiments was that the unloaded thermal actuators would always deform forward, that is in the direction of shuttle motion with increasing current, and that loaded actuators would deform in the opposite ... using traditional finite-element analysis (FEA). Because of the long, slender nature of thermal actuators, it is appropriate to use beam elements in the FEA solution to reduce computational expense, ... Validation To verify that the model captures all the relevant physical effects, several different actuators fabricated in the SUMMiT VTM process were compared to model predictions, including...