Finite Element Simulation of the Vibratory Characteristics for Quartz Tuning Fork Gyroscope

The micro quartz crystal tuning fork gyroscope is a new type of vibratory gyroscope. The gyroscope should be analyzed and simulated early in the design stage in order to offer reliable basis for design and to shorten the period of development. Thus the vibratory characteristics of the gyroscope is simulated with the finite element method of coupled field. The optimum exciting frequency and the factors which influence the gyroscope sensitivity are determined. The method for adjusting the frequency deviation between driving and detecting modes is also proposed.

Design and Characterization of a Novel Z-axis Quartz Cross-fork Micromachined Gyroscope

The existing researches on quartz gyroscope mainly focus on the structure design of the tuning fork, which aim at obtaining a better vibration characterization. However, the fabrication of complicated structure is a challenge for present processes, and the imperfect fabrication process seriously affects the performances of the sensors. In this paper, a novel quartz cross-fork structure micromachined gyroscope is proposed. The sensor has a simple structure in x-y plane of quartz crystal. Unlike other quartz gyroscopes, the proposed gyroscope is based on shear stress detection to sense Coriolis’ force rather than normal stress detection. This feature can simplify the sensing electrode patterns and miniaturize the structure easily. Then the mechanical analysis of the structure is discussed. In order to obtain high sensitivities and uniform characteristics between different structures, the sensing beam is designed to be tapered, and the taper should be appreciably greater than 1°. This scheme is validated by finite element analysis software. The dynamic characteristic of the structure is analyzed by lumped parameter model. The dynamic stress in the beam and the detection sensitivity are deduced to optimize the structure parameter of gyroscope. Finally, the gyroscope is fabricated by quartz anisotropic wet etching. The prototype is characterized as follows. The drive mode frequency is 13.38 kHz, and the quality factor is about 900 in air. The scale factor is 1.45 mV/（（°） s –1 ） and the nonlinearity is 3.6% in the dynamic range of ±200°/s. Process and test results show that the proposed quartz gyroscope can achieve a high performance at atmosphere pressure. The research can simplify the fabrication of the quartz gyroscope, and is taken as a novel method for the design of quartz gyroscope.

Periodic Error Compensation for Quartz MEMS Gyroscope Drift of INS

In order to improve the navigation accuracy of an inertial navigation system （INS）, composed of quartz gyroscopes, the existing real-time compensation methods for periodic errors in quartz gyroscope drift and the periodic error term relationship between sampled original data and smoothed data are reviewed. On the base of the results, a new compensation method called using former period characteristics to compensate latter smoothness data （UFCL for short） method is proposed considering the INS working characteristics. This new method uses the original data without smoothing to work out an error conversion formula at the INS initial alignment time and then compensate the smoothed data errors by way of the formula at the navigation time. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate that this method is able to cut down on computational time and raise the accuracy which makes it a better real-time compensation approach for periodic error terms of quartz micro electronic mechanical system （MEMS） gyroscope＇s zero drift.