Simulations and Experiments Study on the Mechanical Quality Factor of the Cylindrical Shell Fused Silica Resonators

Abstract

Abstract. The cylindrical shell fused silica resonator is the critical component of a cylindrical vibratory gyroscope, and the quality factor is a key parameter to evaluate the performance of the cylindrical resonator. This paper focuses on the quality factor of the cylindrical shell fused silica resonator. The influence of air damping, surface defect loss, thermoelastic dissipation and internal friction loss on the quality factor are studied through simulations, which provide a theoretical trend for quality factor experiments. Quality factor is further explored by means of changing different damping loss of the resonator, for example, annealing, chemical polishing or vacuum pumping in experiments and the Q factor of the experimental cylindrical shell fused silica resonator has been optimized comprehensively, about 110 times.