Modeling and analysis of mechanical Quality factor of the resonator for cylinder vibratory gyroscope

Abstract

Mechanical Quality factor(Q factor) of the resonator is an important parameter for the cylinder vibratory gyroscope(CVG). Traditional analytical methods mainly focus on a partial energy loss during the vibration process of the CVG resonator, thus are not accurate for the mechanical Q factor prediction. Therefore an integrated model including air damping loss, surface defect loss, support loss, thermoelastic damping loss and internal friction loss is proposed to obtain the mechanical Q factor of the CVG resonator. Based on structural dynamics and energy dissipation analysis, the contribution of each energy loss to the total mechanical Q factor is quantificationally analyzed. For the resonator with radius ranging from 10 mm to 20 mm, its mechanical Q factor is mainly related to the support loss, thermoelastic damping loss and internal friction loss, which are fundamentally determined by the geometric sizes and material properties of the resonator. In addition, resonators made of alloy 3J53 (Ni42CrTiAl), with different sizes, were experimentally fabricated to test the mechanical Q factor. The theoretical model is well verified by the experimental data, thus provides an effective theoretical method to design and predict the mechanical Q factor of the CVG resonator.