Investigation of the Influence of Inertial Mass Suspension Structure of Glass Micromechanical Accelerometer on its Properties

The paper deals with a promising MEMS accelerometer made of radiation-resistant glass using the technology of pulling from glass rods and tubes. An alternative structural scheme of a pendulum accelerometer with an inertial mass suspension formed from glass structures of two shapes - hexagonal and tubular - is developed. By using the finite-element modeling methods, a comparative analysis of mechanical characteristics of MEMS models with different inertial mass suspensions has been performed, namely, for both models stresses and deformations at accelerations in the range up to 50g have been calculated. The calculation of natural frequencies was also performed. The analysis of the obtained results demonstrated that both schemes have close values of these characteristics, but a detailed consideration of the stress distribution in the suspension structures allows us to conclude that the hexagonal structure is more resistant to failure. The possible sensitivity of the sensor for two variants of the inertial mass suspension is also evaluated. It is proved that in both cases at accelerations up to 50g the capacitive sensor has a sufficient range of capacitance variation for acceleration registration.

accelerometer, MEMS, sensing element, radiation-resistant glass, inertial mass, modeling, finite element model