Design and fabrication of a dual-axial gyroscope with piezoelectric ceramics

Piezoelectric gyroscopes are devices for measuring the angular rotation of a system with respect to an inertial frame of reference by means of the Coriolis principle. Most current piezoelectric gyroscopes detect the angular velocity about a single axis of rotation. This paper describes the development of a new dual-axial gyroscope made out of the piezoelectric ceramic PZT, which can overcome the limitation of the current single-axial type. The validity of the new structure is checked through finite-element analysis. Based on the design, an experimental sample of the sensor is fabricated and its performance is discussed in comparison with the theoretical expectation. The results show that the present gyroscope is capable of measuring the rotational velocity over two orthogonal axes simultaneously with good enough sensitivity and distinction between the two axial components of the rotation.