Impact of Thermal Behavior on Offset in a High-Q Gyroscope

TL;DR

This study uses CFD simulations to analyze how thermal effects influence offset in high-Q gyroscopes, revealing that smaller gaps increase temperature differences and offset, with experimental verification of the impact of gap size.

Contribution

It introduces a CFD-based approach to model thermal behavior in high-Q gyroscopes and demonstrates how gap size affects offset through thermal and pressure variations.

Findings

Smaller gaps lead to larger temperature and pressure differences.

Thermal effects significantly impact gyroscope offset.

Increasing gap size reduces offset by about two-thirds.

Abstract

In this paper, CFD approach is used to simulate the thermal behavior in a sensitive high-Q gyroscope. The electromagnetically driving wires, in which AC current flows, are treated as Joule heat sources in the model. We found that the differences of temperature, pressure and velocity along the driving direction and transversely across the proof masses increased as the gap height between the proof mass and top glass became smaller. Local pressure gradient is expected to possibly enhance the impact of any imperfect led by MEMS processes or designs on the offset of our tuning fork type gyroscope, which has been experimentally verified. A device with 200um gap gives a two-third offset down compared with that of its counterpart with 50um gap.