Study of a Novel Isotropic Suspension Design for an Angular Gyroscope

This paper describes the analysis of a novel isotropic suspension designed for use in a Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) z-axis angular gyroscope. The suspension, consisting of six concentric interconnected rings rigidly attached to an anchored frame, supports a resonating proof mass whose line of oscillation precesses in the presence of rotation induced Coriolis force. The paper demonstrates that the studied suspension is robust to quadrature errors and minimizes structural energy losses. Using a strain energy method, a closed form solution for the effective stiffness is developed, which is confirmed using finite element modeling. A parametric analysis is used to verify the necessity of thick structural layers in the fabrication of the suspension in order to separate desirable and undesirable modes of vibration.