A Mode Matched Triaxial Vibratory Wheel Gyroscope with Fully Decoupled Structure

Sensors (Basel). 2015 Nov 17;15(11):28979-9002. doi: 10.3390/s151128979.

Abstract

To avoid the oscillation of four unequal masses seen in previous triaxial linear gyroscopes, a modified silicon triaxial gyroscope with a rotary wheel is presented in this paper. To maintain a large sensitivity and suppress the coupling of different modes, this novel gyroscope structure is designed be perfectly symmetrical with a relatively large size of about 9.8 mm × 9.8 mm. It is available for differentially detecting three-axis angular rates simultaneously. To overcome the coupling between drive and sense modes, numerous necessary frames, beams, and anchors are delicately figured out and properly arranged. Besides, some frequency tuning and feedback mechanisms are addressed in the case of post processing after fabrication. To facilitate mode matched function, a new artificial fish swarm algorithm (AFSA) performed faster than particle swarm optimization (PSO) with a frequency split of 108 Hz. Then, by entrusting the post adjustment of the springs dimensions to the finite element method (FEM) software ANSYS, the final frequency splits can be below 3 Hz. The simulation results demonstrate that the modal frequencies in drive and different sense modes are respectively 8001.1, 8002.6, 8002.8 and 8003.3 Hz. Subsequently, different axis cross coupling effects and scale factors are also analyzed. The simulation results effectively validate the feasibility of the design and relevant theoretical calculation.

Keywords: artificial fish swarm algorithm; gyroscope structure; mode matching; triaxial gyroscope.