Abstract
The structural deformations caused by environmental changes in temperature, vibration, and other factors are harmful to the stability of high precision measurement equipment. The stability and optimal design method of a 2D optoelectronic angle sensor have been investigated in this study. The drift caused by structural deformations of the angle sensor has been studied and a drift error model has been achieved. Key components sensitive to thermal and vibrational effects were identified by error sensitivity analysis and simulation. The mounts of key components were analyzed using finite element analysis software and optimized based on the concept of symmetric structures. Stability experiments for the original and optimized angle sensors have been carried out for contrast. As a result, the stability of the optimized angle sensor has been improved by more than 63%. It is verified that the modeling and optimal design method is effective and low-cost, which can also be applied to improve the stability of other sensors with much more complex principles and structures.
Highlights
In the past two decades, precision angle measurement technology has been found to be essential in various precision instruments, such as micro-coordinate measurement machines (CMMs), microprobes, nanopositioning stages, multi-degree-of-freedom measurement (MDFM) systems, and atomic force microscopes [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
Structural deformations and drift errors caused by temperature fluctuation and vibration should be reduced to guarantee the stability of an angle measurement system
The center coordinates (x, y) of the light spot can be simplified by omitting small values: x ≈ − f · tan(2αY − εLD−Y − 2εPBS−Y − εFL−Y ) + δFL−X − δQPD−X, (13)
Summary
In the past two decades, precision angle measurement technology has been found to be essential in various precision instruments, such as micro-coordinate measurement machines (CMMs), microprobes, nanopositioning stages, multi-degree-of-freedom measurement (MDFM) systems, and atomic force microscopes [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Temperature fluctuation and vibration are the main environmental factors causing structural deformations of an angle sensor. Structural deformations and drift errors caused by temperature fluctuation and vibration should be reduced to guarantee the stability of an angle measurement system. Some other methods that adopt complicated structures have been developed to improve the Sensors 2019, 19, 4409; doi:10.3390/s19204409 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors. Zhu et al developed an angle sensor based on the laser autocollimation principle, for which the drift can be detected by another common-path angle sensor and corrected [6]. A design concept that follows the symmetry structure principle was proposed by our group to improve the thermal stability of an angle sensor [18].
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