Design and vibration sensitivity analysis of a MEMS tuning fork gyroscope with an anchored diamond coupling mechanism

In this paper, a new micromachined tuning fork gyroscope (TFG) with an anchored diamond coupling mechanism is proposed while the mode ordering and the vibration sensitivity are also investigated. The sense-mode of the proposed TFG was optimized through use of an anchored diamond coupling spring, which enables the in-phase mode frequency to be 108.3% higher than the anti-phase one. The frequencies of the in-and anti-phase modes in the sense direction are 9799.6 Hz and 4705.3 Hz, respectively. The analytical solutions illustrate that the stiffness difference ratio of the in-and anti-phase modes is inversely proportional to the output induced by the vibration from the sense direction. Additionally, FEM simulations demonstrate that the stiffness difference ratio of the anchored diamond coupling TFG is 16.08 times larger than the direct coupling one while the vibration output is reduced by 94.1%. Consequently, the proposed new anchored diamond coupling TFG can structurally increase the stiffness difference ratio to improve the mode ordering and considerably reduce the vibration sensitivity without sacrificing the scale factor.