A Study of Cross-axis Effect for Micromachined Thermal Gas Inertial Sensor

Micromachined thermal gas inertial sensors are novel devices that take advantages of simple configuration, high shock resistance and good reliability in virtue of using gaseous medium instead of mechanical proof mass as key moving and sensing elements. Because of complexity of gas flow movements, the gas inertial sensor generally undergoes a cross-axis problem. In this paper a study of cross-axis sensitivity on the thermal gas inertial sensor based on convection heat transfer is reported. The cross-axis sensitivity of the sensor is induced from the multidimensional coupling movement of the convection flow in the sensor chamber and can be reduced by a tailored structural design. Combining more than two sensors instead of using a particular structure design to build an integrated sensor system incorporating with a fusion methodology is proposed in this paper, which is an effective way to overcome the cross-axis effect and realize decoupling the measurements of the angular-rates around cross-axes.