Design Study of Multidirectional Jet Flow for a Triple-Axis Fluidic Gyroscope

In this paper, we report the design study of a fluidic device that produces four microjet flows comprising two perpendicular pairs of flow and the application of these jets for an angular rate sensor. The jets were created in a closed fluidic network without a check valve and they can freely deflect in a confined sensing chamber. The formation of the continuous flow in a confined space has been confirmed by experiment. This allows the study to a triple-axis angular rate sensor whose working principle relies on the deflection of a jet in a rotating frame. In this paper, the formation of the jets is considered such that the jets have an axisymmetric property, which is key to overcoming the apparent decoupling and cross sensitivity. The triple-axis angular rate sensor can be designed with only four thermal sensing elements. The transient flow simulation under an applied angular velocity provides a design with small size and minimum number of hotwires, which is beneficial for single-chip development and also maintains compatibility with bulk microfabrication technology. While the sensing performances of the three axes are in the same order of magnitude, the cross sensitivity is two orders smaller than that in the published results. In addition to the inertial sensing application, this paper can be adapted to help researchers quickly develop a prototype or to integrate an inertial sensing component in their own microfluidic, microbio, or lab-on-a-chip systems.