  We consider a free boundary problem modeling electrostatic
microelectromechanical systems. The model consists of a fourth-order damped
wave equation for the elastic plate displacement which is coupled to an
elliptic equation for the electrostatic potential. We first review some recent
results on existence and non-existence of steady-states as well as on local and
global well-posedness of the dynamical problem, the main focus being on the
possible touchdown behavior of the elastic plate. We then investigate the
behavior of the solutions in the time singular limit when the ratio between
inertial and damping effects tends to zero.
