Affiliations: College of Opto-Electronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan, China
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Xu-Dong Yu, College of Opto-Electronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, China. E-mail:wind0909@163.com
Abstract: The performance of the ring laser gyroscope (RLG) can be affected by
variations of the optical path length, due to temperature change and other
operation environment factors. This paper focuses on the optimization of the
path length control (PLC) transducer to get the largest displacement of the
grooved mirror by the finite element method (FEM). To verify the analysis
results, a mode-scanning experiment is carried out. The experimental result
shows agreement with that of the FEM analysis. We show that a careful
selection of material and geometry parameters allows the displacement
amplitude to be maximized as 6.48 μm, a value that is 3 times the
displacement in the existing structure. A minimization of the number of mode
reset is achieved, leading to an improvement of RLG performance.
Keywords: Ring laser gyroscope, path length control transducer, piezoelectric actuator, design optimization, finite element analysis
