A novel ring vibrating gyroscope based on side piezo-electrodes

Solid-state wave gyroscope is one kind of high-performance vibrating gyroscopes. The present work develops a new type of solid-state wave gyroscope-a ring vibrating gyroscope driven by piezo-electrodes located on the sidewall of the structure. It has advantages of large vibrating amplitude, high energy conversion efficiency and compact structure. The working principle of the piezoelectric ring vibrating gyroscope is based on the inertia effect of the standing wave in the axisymmetric resonator caused by Coriolis force. The finite element method (FEM) analysis has been implemented to characterize the ring type resonator. The prototypal gyroscope was manufactured and has been trimmed by mechanical way. The harmonic response of the ring vibrating gyroscope has been tested. The resonating frequency of the ring type resonator is 3715.6 Hz and the frequency split of the two working modes before trimming was about 5 Hz and was reduced to sub -0.01 Hz after trimming procedure. The Q-factor of the ring type resonator was 2504. Then, the turntable experiment was implemented. The measured scale factor k is 9.24 mV/[(A degrees)a (TM) s] and the full scale range of the gyroscope is larger than +/- 300 (A degrees)/s.