Enhancing the Shock Response Performance of Micromachined Silicon Resonant Accelerometers by Electrostatic Active Damping Control

Micromachines (Basel). 2021 Dec 12;12(12):1548. doi: 10.3390/mi12121548.

Abstract

This paper presents a micromachined silicon resonant accelerometer based on electrostatic active damping control, which can improve the shock response performance of the accelerometer. In the accelerometer, an electrostatic active damping structure and damping control circuit are designed to improve the equivalent damping coefficient of the system. System-level Simulink modeling and simulation of the accelerometer with an electrostatic active damping closed-loop control link were carried out. The simulation results indicate that the system can quickly return to normal output without an obvious vibration process after the shock. The fabricated and packaged accelerometer was connected to an external test circuit for shock performance testing. The stabilization time of the accelerometer after a 100 g, 3-5 ms half-sine shock was reduced from 19.8 to 5.6 s through use of the damping control. Furthermore, the change in deviation before and after the shock without damping control was 0.8197 mg, whereas it was 0.1715 mg with damping control. The experimental results demonstrate that the electrostatic active damping control can effectively improve the dynamic performance of the micromachined silicon resonant accelerometer.

Keywords: electrostatic active damping control; resonant accelerometer; shock response performance.