On decoupled quantification of energy dissipation mechanisms in toroidal ring gyroscopes

Abstract

We present a study on the quantification of the energy dissipation mechanisms in Toroidal Ring Gyroscopes (TRG). Our approach is based on suppression of the viscous air damping and controlling thermoelastic dissipation (TED), thus exposing the anchor loss of the device. During testing, energy dissipative factors, such as viscous air damping, TED, and surface loss, were minimized by venting the encapsulation, pumping down to ultrahigh vacuum (UHV), and sweeping the temperature down to 123K, so that anchor loss became the dominant factor that influenced the overall quality factor of the device. The anchor loss limit of the tested TRG was measured to be 1.35 million, and this value was on the same level as predicted by PML method. This study demonstrates the use of a methodology for analysis of energy dissipation mechanisms in MEMS devices and the possibility of quantifying the contribution of each mechanism independently.